Education technology professor receives best paper award

Albert Ritzhaupt, an associate professor of educational technology at UF, received the best paper award at this year’s Informing Science + IT Education (InSITE) conference in Porto, Portugal. 

InSITE is a conference sponsored by the Informing Science Institute, a professional association in information and communication technology. 

The paper was a joint effort between Ritzhaupt and Grandon Gill, a professor of information systems at the University of South Florida, where Ritzhaupt earned his Ph.D. Gill was the principal investigator for the National Science Foundation-funded study and Ritzhaupt served as a consultant on this grant program. 

Their research investigated the effectiveness of using authentic case-based instruction in an information systems course at USF. 

According to Ritzhaupt, most information systems students are preparing for eventual jobs as technology managers and want to learn how to make effective business and technology decisions. In the case-based approach that Ritzhaupt and Gill studied, teachers simulate authentic cases by asking students to take on the role of a protagonist and make decisions related to information systems, like choosing what kinds of technology to use to develop a business. 

The researchers found that case studies are an effective means of teaching based on their evaluation of student perception and achievement.