An information systems-centric curriculum, ISCC ’99

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Abstract

This article describes a curriculum designed to prepare students to work with large systems, to take a systems view from the very beginning, and to develop collaborative and communications skills. The curriculum is a result of a mutually beneficial collaboration between university professors and representatives from business and industry. The curriculum builds an academically sound conceptual technical base for the student and focuses on the needs of the workplace. Student learning and faculty teaching paradigms were explored and were incorporated into the curriculum design. The resulting curriculum provides an educational experience that produces students prepared to meet the increasing needs of industry to create and use complex information systems and forms the basis for life-long learning.

Introduction

A working group with equal representation from academia and business and industry developed the ISCC ’99 curriculum over a four-year period. The members from business and industry prepared a “Profile of the Graduate” to describe the skills and knowledge they wanted in a new hire. This “Profile of the Graduate” was the specification for the design of the curriculum. Since the “Profile of the Graduate” includes the level expected for each skill and knowledge unit, the curriculum was designed to take an incoming student, and through the process of the curriculum, develop a student with the desired attributes.

A summary of the industry determined profile of a graduate follows:

  • 1.

    Personal skills

    • Systemic thinking

    • Problem solving

    • Critical thinking

    • Risk taking

    • Personal discipline

    • Persistence

    • Curiosity

  • 2.

    Interpersonal skills

    • Collaboration

    • Oral, written, listening, and group communication

    • Conflict resolution

  • 3.

    Technical knowledge and skills

    • Information abstraction, representation and organization

    • Enterprise computing architectures and delivery systems

    • Concepts of information and systems distribution

    • Human behavior and computer interaction

    • Dynamics of change

    • Process management and systems development

    • Use of computing tools to apply knowledge

The ISCC ’99 curriculum was designed to produce a graduate who can satisfy the industry profile listed above and provide a graduate prepared with the fundamental concepts for life-long learning. The ISCC ’99 curriculum does not replace traditional Information Systems or Computer Science curricula, but it builds upon the foundations of these curricula to produce a new type of graduate. The ISCC ’99 curriculum document specifies in detail only the computing courses needed and the courses dealing with the ethical responsibility of a potential graduate of the program. Subjects, such as probability and statistics, found in most academic programs which teach concepts that are essential prerequisites for the work involved in these courses are listed, but do not have the content detailed. Thus, the curriculum specifies some quantitative courses and a group behavior course that are not completely outlined. The developers assume that all students will take the general education courses required by their own institution to develop a broad base, including social science, humanities, writing, science, and mathematics.

Section snippets

Innovations in this curriculum

1. Preparing students to work with large systems

The working group’s industry representatives saw a real problem in the development, deployment and maintenance of large systems. The popular press reports many incidents of complex systems failures and the literature is full of cases relating to failures of large systems. The focus of this curriculum is on preparing students to work with large, complex systems. We believe that in most cases this same preparation will also prepare students to work

Content of the curriculum

It is important to realize that, in addition to the formal course outlines, a set of critical skills, practices, and pedagogy are integrated throughout this curriculum and are part of every course. The following should be pervasive throughout the curriculum:

  • The development of individual and team portfolios.

  • The development of oral and written communications skills for individuals and teams, including listening skills.

  • The use of available tools for developing and managing projects.

  • The integration

Course descriptions

The descriptions of the main courses, which are a part of the curriculum, are given below:

ISCC-11 Information Systems in Enterprises. Students are immersed in the information system field. They observe information systems used in organizations. They develop rudimentary abilities to critique systems. They begin to develop the vocabulary of the field. Using modeling tools they construct and exercise models of a variety of information systems at a block diagram level. In all of their activities

Why we feel this will better prepare students

1. Meets the needs articulated by the business and industry members of the taskforce.

The curriculum has been carefully checked to see that it meets the level of learning for each of the specified technical knowledge skills in the Profile of the Graduate, which is the specification of the representatives from business and industry. In addition, many industry people, with uniformly positive evaluations, have reviewed the curriculum. The curriculum attempts to address the development of personal

Conclusion

ISCC ’99 provides a conceptual foundation for graduates who wish to become involved as members of teams in the design and implementation of complex, enterprise information systems that meet the diverse and complete information requirements of today’s and tomorrow’s industry. This approach emphasizes the systems view, which is introduced early in the curriculum, along with teaming and communications skill building through practice. The systems view is central to the courses in the middle years,

Acknowledgements

The work was supported by grants from NSF/DUE to the late Michael Mulder and Doris Lidtke. Great credit for this work goes to the Task Force: Jim Blair, Della Bonnette, David Feinstein, Forouzan Golshani, Tom Howell, Liz Kaufman, Norm Kerth, Anita Lasalle, and Gordon Stokes. We profited greatly from the advice of our National Visiting Committee: Gordon Davis, Jimmie Haines, and Joe Turner.

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This work was supported by the National Science Foundation’s Division of Undergraduate Education through grants DUE-9455450 and DUE-9796243.

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