Diane Lending
Richard G. Mathieu
ABSTRACT
Accreditation is a means of evaluating and improving curriculum. ABET accreditation requires that IS programs assess whether students attain the programs' educational objectives after they graduate. One way to assess these objectives is to ask alumni how important these objectives were in their job success and how well their education prepared them for these objectives. In October 2009, a web survey was sent to recent IS graduates to ask them to rate how well they felt the IS program prepared them for their first and subsequent jobs. This paper analyzes the results and sees how the objectives align with the skills that these graduates felt they needed on their job. Graduates felt well prepared for implementing software and database solutions as well as technical presentation. The largest gaps in preparation were in management of projects, analysis of technical solutions, non-technical writing. The research serves two purposes: 1) to model a process for other IS programs seeking ABET accreditation; and 2) to provide evidence as to whether these objectives are perceived as providing an adequate base for preparing an IS workforce.
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- ABET 2009-2010. Criteria for Accrediting Computing Programs: Effective for Evaluations During the 2009-2010 Accreditation Cycle taken from www.ABET.org, September 23, 2009.Google Scholar
- Benamati, J. "S." and Mahaney R.C. 2007. Current and Future Entry-Level IT Workforce Needs in Organizations. In Proceedings of the SIGMIS Conference on Computer Personnel Research (St. Louis, Missouri, USA, April 19--21, 2007). CPR'07. ACM Press, New York, NY, 101--104. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1235000.1235024 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Merhout, J., Benamati, J., Rajkumar, T.M., Anderson, P. and Marado, D. 2008. Implementing Direct and Indirect Assessment in the MIS Curriculum. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 23, Article 24. (Oct. 2008) 419--436. http://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/vol23/iss1/24Google Scholar
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- Sumner, M. and Yager, S.E. 2008. An Investigation of Preparedness and Importance of MIS Competencies: Research in Progress. In Proceedings of the SIGMIS Conference on Computer Personnel Research (Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, April 3--5, 2008.) CPR'08. ACM Press, New York, NY, 97--100. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1355238.1355260 Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Workforce preparation and ABET assessment
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