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Creating an IT Governance Presentation

Here is an example of using GenAI to create a professional product to provide evidence for a specific Learning Outcome (LO). In this example, the learning outcome IT Governance and Strategic Alignment for Semester 6 ICT&Business students has been selected to experience how students can create individual evidence for LOs. Semester 6 for ICT&Business has a fixed set of LOs. The format of the semester is that students work in teams to complete projects for external partners. These projects will of course lead to relevant professional products and therefore evidence of LOs. Often, however, these projects will not cover all LOs. In order to provide evidence for each LO, students often have to create additional, individual products that meet the LO. The example here is an attempt to provide such evidence. The format of the professional project produced is a presentation. This presentation could be given by the student to an audience of fellow students and a coach/assessor. The presentation could then be followed by a Q&A session to "verify" that the student has sufficient knowledge and understanding of the subject matter.

Once I had decided on a topic and a format for the professional product for the LO IT Governance and Strategic Alignment, the process for creating it was as follows:

  1. list some facts about what I already know about the topic
  2. list some questions about what I want to find out about the topic
  3. collect (relevant) articles and papers on the topic
  4. create a NotebookLM notebook and see how the collected papers answer your questions
  5. start a chat with ChatGPT to get answers to your questions. Follow-up on ChatGPT's responses, based on the knowledge already acquired in the previous steps.
  6. let ChatGPT summarise your dialogue in an essay
  7. let ChatGPT generate a presentation with speaker notes from the essay.

One of the steps was to create a (Google) NotebookLM notebook. This was instructive, but in the end not as valuable for my purpose. NotebookLM allows you to do more rigorous research on a particular topic. It does this by keeping track of the publications (articles, papers, but also complete books are possible) that you've added to the notebook. This will allow you to make proper references in your answers. This is ideal for projects where you need to demonstrate the rigour of your research by properly referencing the facts you use in your own research. However, our students' work often does not require such academic rigour. We want to see a basic understanding of and opinion on a topic from our students. For such content, ChatGPT or any of the other mainstream chat-based GenAIs (Claude, Gemini, etc.) are better suited.

Reflection

The interesting question, having created a professional product in this way, is of course what I have actually learned about the project. I was a noob on this topic at the start of this exercise, but I can't say that I'm much more than a noob now. The whole exercise required the necessary effort, but this effort was mainly put into the handling of GenAI. So I mainly improved my knowledge of working with GenAI, which is of course valuable, but not what the LO was about. However, as a coach and assessor of S6 students myself, I would have accepted this work as evidence of the LO, provided the student was able to show some basic insight in the Q&A after the presentation. I'm sure I would have passed myself, with an impressive presentation (and essay), even if I had only shown basic knowledge in the Q&A.

I think this whole exercise touches on one of the assessment issues we have within FICT, at least within the ICT&Business programme. First of all, what use has it in our philosophy of teaching to have learning outcomes for which we can't offer students a professional (project) context to learn about this outcome in context. In addition, as we no longer require teachers to have subject knowledge of the LOs, it becomes easier to use GenAI to create impressive looking professional products for which it is not easy to assess LO behind it on its substantive merits. Previously, being confronted with a sloppy product would have been reason enough to dismiss the knowledge gained. But with GenAI, there is no reason to produce sloppy products. For an assessor, now more than ever in the era of GenAI, there is no need to be impressed by a good-looking text or presentation. Especially in ICT&Business.

Does that mean we should be dismissive of these products? No, we shouldn't. It just doesn't prove much in itself. Clearly, it proves that you have given some initial thought and consideration to the subject. It also proves that you know your way around GenAI, and that's a general, valuable skill. But if you go the extra mile, the dialogue, essay and presentation can be used as a starting point to learn much more in-depth about the topic. However, to encourage a student to go further, the stakes often need to be higher, as few students are able to generate sufficient intrinsic motivation to research an assigned topic in depth. Stakes could be raised by a thorough, in-depth Q&A session with a subject expert, or a project client who has an interest in and expectation of the value of the professional products produced. And maybe, just maybe, the student could become intrinsically motivated to learn more about the subject just by experiencing, perhaps even enjoying, the creation of such a project. It might ignite enthusiasm and real ownership of learning about the subject and start pursuing new knowledge by asking new questions to GenAI and googling for answers. Or better yet, start discussing it with fellow students and experts.

Here are the links to the various resources of this exercise: