I was introduced to PBCL by Gerhard Salinger in 2002. He told me to look up PBCL as part of a grant we got in 2002. I was the Program Head for Information Technology at Northern Virginia Community College at the time. I contacted Ruth Loring and I asked her to teach me about PBCL. She coached me remotely through the PBCL process. I created my first PBCL case with her coaching and used it in my courses. The case was an online time keeping application. It was not a real problem from a real business partner but it allowed me to learn the process of designing PBCL.
I found PBCL to be more engaging with my students and had many success stories from my courses. I have students who became VP of technology, work as consultants, and became developers from this approach. The real world approach of problem solving help my students learn the soft skills that our employers kept telling us our students needed to know.
I transitioned with Ruth’s help to become a coach and participated in many orientations and design and development institutes. We delivered training to Virginia, Maryland, and Nebraska. I also developed several PBCL cases myself through a business partner. His name is Guy Hinkler, CEO of V2 Systems. We developed several cases and I did video shoots at his office. I had several faculty use these cases in Virginia. One case was a security issue at a data center which was about stealing of data. Another case was a security issue at a hotel in Washington DC. I also worked with Ruth on developing of a Cigna case that is about medical records and how to deal with different kinds of medical records.
When I was hired by Capella University in 2004, I tried to integrate PBCL principles into the IT program as a core and now as a chair. We were able to have cases using all the tools of PBCL but not live business partners. The problems were simulated but real problems faced by professionals in the field. But, we provided learners the opportunity to use real business partners in each course as an option and some learners did select that option every term. We were able to use real business partners in our capstone course. PBCL has influenced the undergraduate IT program at Capella and has differentiated the program from other competitors.
During one term, I used the PBCL approach with a learner who wanted to learn how to program on the iPhone. There was a problem with tracking bibliography entries and there was not an application to do that. My learner decided to design this application. His stakeholders were faculty and other learners.
Since graduation, he works as an independent consultant for a startup called Data Makes the Difference. This company markets and sells a successful line of applications to help treat children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. His main function is as lead architect. As such he is responsible for the entire product line of iOS applications and their Team Web Portal. The product line started out as a bespoke set of set of iOS applications, but was recently integrated with a .NET based web service. When he signed on with the company in September of 2010, their products were suffering from severe quality issues due to poor outsourcing choices. He redesigned and refactored the applications as my first task.
I also worked on my doctorate and PBCL influenced my doctoral work and my dissertation. I am a big proponent of PBCL and a PBCL evangelist & coach. I continue to promote PBCL as a teaching methodology and try to integrate it into our programs at Capella.
Dr Keith Morneau, Chair, IT, Capella University