This paper has focused on the use of a group support system and decision room facilities in general, and has given an overview of some of the more notable cases from the laboratory of decision support systems at LUT. Right from the start the objective was not so much to test the facility, than to give a description of the possibilities and experiences for others to consider. The theoretical background suggests that the use of a GSS in learning activities could have significant value in education. If the direction of teaching will evolve from lecturing to a more problem-based and collaborative direction, educators face the problem of how to engage relatively large groups of students in the learning activity, while encouraging everyone to participate and to focus on the subject in hand.
According to the theory proposition, a GSS might offer a good toolset for that purpose, but again the flipside of the coin is that the advantages of a GSS do not come for free and harvesting them requires adaptation from both the students and the educators. As the theory points out, the effective use of a GSS in any situation needs attention to the group process and session planning, as well as some adaptation in the part of the users, as the communication mode will be somewhat different from the traditional spoken and written communication.
In support of the presented theory, the case examples in the study describe the present state of practice in LUT and some results obtained during these exercises. As of now, there has not been systematical testing of learning results or the possible effect of the GSS on them, but some insight has been gained. The overall satisfaction with the laboratory expressed by the participants has been generally good and as far as anecdotal evidence goes, the results are encouraging.
The case examples have been deliberately kept concise, but a more analytic approach to the cases can be found in the writers’ previous publications. Table 4 below draws together the most important findings from the case examples for additional illustration.
Qualitative research is normally based on a limited amount of research data, for example on one or a few studied case situations. The reason for this is usually limited time and resources, because understanding one case situation profoundly is laborious and time consuming. The great challenge of this kind of research is to get results, which can also be reliably generalised, to other situations in a similar environment. However, in this study there was no intention to generalize the research results. In the presented cases, it is neither possible nor necessary to prove that the research findings presented in the study are general and suitable to any possible settings. There seem to be some benefits, but the question of which population this can be generalized to and with which limitations, is not effectively answered.
These limitations are based on the fact that the actual learning or performance ex ante and ex post GSS sessions has not been measured, or compared to traditional f-to-f workshops or other comparable situations. The findings and conclusions have to be treated as plausible, not generalised normative statements. As of now, the reported results are strictly speaking not generalisable in the sense that they could be extrapolated to other contexts, but rather in the sense that they indicate that there may be benefits to gain in certain populations and session setups.
As a descriptive case study, the contribution of this study lies in the reporting on real world phenomena to open up new research questions for further research. What this study has done, is to present an attractive, and one could perhaps say a novel, approach to exercise problem-based learning more effectively, and by doing this it has posed new challenges for education and educational research. As promising a tool a GSS might be, the advantages are not to be taken for granted. On practical level this would mean further research into the event of using a GSS and studying what makes the event itself successful. The concept of using a GSS seems already to be feasible but as the previous reports indicate, not automatically. These findings should turn the attention of research to not so much proving that a GSS offers a means for learning, but perhaps rather to the process and situational factors as determinants for success to understand how a GSS enhances learning and how these benefits be can harvested. The challenges that arise from these considerations can be seen to be twofold; on one hand there is the challenge of planning the process and everyday teaching activities in education for better utilization of the GSS and groupware technologies, including the benefits asynchronous and decentralised participation might offer, and on the other hand finding and verifying what might be called the critical success factors for utilizing a GSS in education to achieve its full potential.
Case Selection decisions Learning aspects
Idea generation - Increased participation - Lively interaction in the group - Traces of group memory
- Students noticed that with a GSS it is possible to generate a lot of ideas in a short time
- The facilitation of the group is easier than in open group discussion
- It is easier to generate wild ideas when you are an anonymous group member
Scenario planning - The end product between different groups varied strongly - Students were able to solve an initially hard problem as a group
- Some students criticized the quality of some input - The process seemed logical and systematic for students
- GSS helps systemization of the process
- Helps in structuring the problem and widens the participants’
perspective on the subject
- Helps in recognizing the most important factors and promotes open-mindedness
- Consensus building and increased understanding on the subject
Business intelligence exercise - The end products were similar but not identical - Students were able to reach session goals - Pairs needed to be guided separately to some extent
- The net effect of the GSS in learning comes from the process and practice in which the system is used
- The laboratory and GSS as such offer little advantage over the normal educational setting
Selection decisions - Aggregation of group knowledge - Consensus building
- Increased acceptance for the results
- Dividing a problem into sub problems help the group to understand the situation better
- Division of selection problem promotes objectivity and rationally in decisions
- The sensitivity analysis helps to analyse the results and to catch the errors in the model
Table 4. Summary of the case findings
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