Learning about Teaching Information Systems in a Problem-Based Curriculum: An Exploratory Study of the Impact of Students Individual Differences on their Conception and Perception of Problem Tasks

Todd (1999) describes the late 20th century as the “age of information”, where an emphasis is placed on the external organization, transformation and communication of information. He argues that the 21st century will be the “age of the mind”, where the key success factors of organizations will be the extent to which they are able to use, share and create knowledge. It is well acknowledged that in order to comply with the demands of the age of the mind, it is imperative for educators at all levels to develop learners with cognitive and meta-cognitive, as well as social, competencies. As birenbaum and dochy (1996) indicate, cognitive competencies include problem solving, critical thinking, formulating questions, searching for relevant information, making informal judgments and ensuring the efficient use of information. Since schools and universities are preparing students for society, both the new role of information and the new required competences should be taken into account when developing courses. Within a variety of disciplines, innovations in education are implemented. For informatics, new ways of teaching are described by davey and tatnall (1994), jurema et al. (1995) and penjam (1997) and are discussed at gatherings organized by the information systems education conference (isecon).keywordsprior knowledgeliterature evaluationemotional stabilityuncertainty avoidancesolution orientationthese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.