Faculty Profile: Dr. Carolyn Seaman

“Our online students…are engaged in interesting and relevant work outside their studies, so they bring valuable experience into the course…”

Carolyn Seaman, associate professor, teaches Systems Analysis and Design, not only in the online MS program, but in the undergraduate and graduate face-to-face programs in the IS department as well.  While the online and face-to-face versions of this course cover the same content and are similar in many ways, there are important differences. The core of the course is a group project, where small groups of students analyze and design a solution to an IT-related problem in a real customer organization. Dr. Seaman comments, “Students in my online course are often skeptical at first about the feasibility of conducting a group project completely online, with team members geographically dispersed. But by the end of the semester, my students overwhelmingly cite the project as the most valuable part of the experience.” Dealing with team members remotely forces students to use their time effectively and to focus on careful coordination and communication. These are essential skills for IS professionals to practice and master.

“I find teaching online to be very rewarding. Our online students are top-notch, and most are engaged in interesting and relevant work outside their studies, so they bring valuable experience into the course, which they then share with me and their classmates,” says Dr. Seaman. Her online lectures feature audio recordings of her own narration, as well as PowerPoint slides, which helps make the relationship with her online students more concrete. There is also a strong emphasis on online discussion, which is a primary vehicle for the students to share work-related experiences.

Dr. Seaman is an active researcher in the area of software engineering, in particular the management of software development and maintenance, and has conducted research and consulting projects with a number of software and IT organizations, both large and small, in the public and private sectors. Her primary interests in this area are software process improvement, software metrics, and software maintenance.

Additional information about Dr. Seaman can be found at http://www.research.umbc.edu/~cseaman/.