Curriculum development in information systems

August 1998, Baltimore at the AIS Conference

June 1999, Curriculum Workshop, Waltham, MA at Bentley College

Beyond the physical and electronic meetings, committee members kept in communications by e-mail, phone, and fax.

PROJECT: IS’97 Model Curriculum & Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Information Systems

Status: Report published (DATABASE, Volume 28, No. 1, 1997) and distributed.
The report is available at:
http://ACM.org/
www.aisnet.org
www.AITP.org
http://webfoot.csom.umn.edu/faculty/gdavis/curcomre.pdf
A hard copy of the report can be ordered from ACM.

During 1998-99 the work continues to receive recognition and is being widely distributed. AIS provided IS'97 on CD-ROM to every person registered for Association for Information Systems Americas Conference in August 1998 and for the International Conference on Information systems in December 1998. It is being used and discussed in conferences in New Zealand. ACM has given copyright permission to an information processing association in Japan to publish the Japanese translation of the full report. ACM has also granted copyright permission to a Polish society for information systems research. They will publish a section of the report in their conference proceedings. There intent is to discuss current IS curricula and use the report to help create a common IS curriculum in Poland.


Project: IS'2000 An update of IS'97

Status: The Joint ACM/AIS/AITP Curriculum Committee has segmented the IS'97 document to allow reading/downloading of individual sections. The URL is http://www.IS2000.org. A procedure has been established to allow discussion and comments regarding IS'97 to be collected online. These comments will be analyzed and used to update IS'97 to IS2000.


PROJECT: Model Curriculum & Guidelines for Graduate Degree Programs in Information Systems

Background:
The last IS graduate curriculum model created by ACM was in 1982. Considering the many changes to the IS discipline, the release of AACSB's revised standards for business accreditation (1994), and a study of existing graduate programs in 1997 by the CIS Task Force (Gorgone and Kanabar), a new look at graduate IS curricula was needed. Representatives of ACM and AIS (Association for Information Systems) met to discuss a joint venture in creating new graduate curricula recommendations. Agreement was reached in August 1997 between ACM and AIS to appoint a Joint Task Force to create model IS curricula for the MS and MBA level. The Joint Task force is charged to consider four separate items:

1. A 2-year MS program in information systems
2. A 1-year MS program in information systems
3. An MBA with a concentration in IS
4. The overview of IS course given to all MBA’s

The following ACM members were appointed to the Joint ACM/AIS Task Force committee in January 1998:

John Gorgone, Bentley College, co-chair
Paul Gray, Claremont Graduate University, co-chair
David Feinstein, University of Southern Alabama
George Kasper, Virginia Commonwealth University
Jerry Luftman, Stevens Institute of Technology
Ted Stohr, New York University
Joe Valacich, Washington State University
Dick Welke, Georgia State University
Rolf Wigand, Syracuse University

This committee includes people who participated in the IS’97 effort (Gorgone, Feinstein, Kasper and Valacich), a diversity of large and small schools, and people who are responsible for major MS programs.

Initially, this committee is focusing on the MSIS program. Two electronic interactive meetings were held over the Internet on May 26 1998 at 2:00pm Eastern time and June 9, 1998 at 1:00pm Easter time, using ISWORLD Net Virtual Meeting Center (VMC) run by Professor Munir Mandviwalla of Temple University. A Curriculum Workshop was held June 18-20,1998 at Bentley College in Waltham, MA. A draft report was prepared. Beyond the physical and electronic meetings, committee members kept in communications by e-mail, phone, and fax.

STATUS: A draft curriculum report was prepared for the MSIS program. However, the draft report was not a "final model," rather it was designed to be discussed by the IS community at various academic and industry meetings and conferences and in order to lead to consensus. The draft report was presented for open discussion and feedback at the August 1998 Association for Information Systems Conference in Baltimore, October 1998 International Association for Computer Information Systems Conference in Cancun, October 1998 Information Systems Education Conference in San Antonio, October 1998 INFORMS Conference in Seattle, November 1998 Decision Sciences Institute Conference in Las Vegas, November 1998 Conference Board meeting in Washington, D.C., December 1998 International Computer Information Systems Conference in Helsinki, December 1998 International Association for Information Management Conference in Helsinki, January 1999 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences in Hawaii and March 1999 ACM SIGCSE Conference in New Orleans.

Presentations and revised draft reports were prepared after each conference presentation and circulated by email to a distribution list. An email distribution list was created from previous meetings and names were collected and added to the list after each presentation. In addition, the most current presentation and draft report was made available at http://cis.bentley.edu/msis/

A second curriculum workshop was held at Bentley College on June 9-12, 1999 to prepare the final draft report. Briefly, the report defines the input skills and output characteristics of the MSIS graduate student, the underlying principles and philosophy of the MSIS program, the building blocks and how they are organized into a curriculum, and special features including a "sliding window" degree structure, the integration component and career tracks. Sample programs and career tracks are presented to illustrate how individual schools can implement the curriculum. The degree structure consists of the following elements: Information Technology Foundations, Business Foundations, Information Systems Core, an integration course, and a three or more course career track. Students may enter the program with various undergraduate degrees. Examples of these degrees are BS in information systems, BS in computer science, BS in business, and a BS/BA in any other major. The students must complete a minimum of 30-semester credit hours and a maximum of 60-semester credit hours depending on their entering background.

A. IS'2000 An update of IS'97

We will continue to work on curriculum updates to IS'97 for completion of IS'2000. Comments regarding IS'97 are being collected online. These comments will be analyzed and used to update IS'97 to IS2000. The draft results will be report at AMCIS '99 conference in August 1999 and other conference in the fall of 1999.

B. Model Curriculum & Guidelines for Graduate Degree Programs in Information Systems

The CIS Task Force is seeking endorsement from various national and international organizations as we did for the IS'97 report. The final draft will be presented at Americas Conference on Information Systems in August 1999, International Association for Information Management in December 1999 and perhaps International Conference on Information Systems in December 1999 and ACM SIGCSE in March 2000. The final report is 90% completed, so we need to complete the remaining 10%. The final report is targeted for release in December 1999. A web site will be created for future updates of the curriculum.

The next step for the Task Force is to address the two remaining charges: An MBA with a concentration in IS and the overview of IS course given to all MBA’s.

C. The Task Force is encouraging the use of IS'97 undergraduate curriculum for use in developing a set of criteria to be used for accreditation of IS programs.

NSF has provided a grant to examine the feasibility of accreditation of programs in computer information systems, science, and technology. There are representatives from ACM, AIS, IEEE-CS, CSAB, and industry on the executive committee. The project will critically examine the potential for accreditation in information systems. The study will include developing a set of criteria and procedures, which could be used for accreditation of IS programs. The study will survey schools and employers to get feedback as to both the value of such accreditation and any adjustments they would desire in the criteria and procedures that are developed.