Digital innovation during covid-19: Transforming challenges to opportunities

Publication Date

1-1-2021

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Communications of the Association for Information Systems

Volume

48

DOI

10.17705/1CAIS.04803

First Page

15

Last Page

25

Abstract

The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) swiftly changed almost all aspects of our lives and society. In this paper, we depict course adjustments that we made to an undergraduate digital innovation course project, called Innovation Farm (IF), in response to the pandemic. Designed as an in-person course project, IF requires students to create AI-powered Android apps to address important social issues. As stay-at-home orders came into effect in March, 2020, we shifted the course to the online modality refocused its student topics to address social issues that COVID-19 has engendered. Accordingly, we also discuss three challenges that we faced and the strategies we employed to cope with them; namely, framing students’ social innovation topics in the COVID-19 context, using virtual studios for online groupwork, and hosting a virtual pitch competition. Surprisingly, these strategies not only addressed the challenges but also created unintended benefits and opportunities. We hope to encourage educators to consider the possibilities in transforming challenges to opportunities during these unprecedented times.

Keywords

Artificial Intelligence, COVID-19, Remote Education, Social Innovation

Department

Information Systems and Technology

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