skip to main content
10.1145/2487294.2487308acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagescprConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Motivating students to acquire mainframe skills

Published: 30 May 2013 Publication History

Abstract

There has been a perception in both industry and in academia that mainframe skills are obsolete. As a result, there has been a decline in curricula addressing these skills. However, recent evidence shows that many organizations are still actively supporting mainframe technologies and report a need for students graduating in information technology to be trained in those skills, especially as much of their current mainframe workforce moves toward retirement. This paper examines the question of what motivates students to acquire mainframe skills. To do so, this research is investigates IBM's Master the Mainframe contest, a competition that attempts to engender enthusiasm for acquiring mainframe skills and ensure an adequate supply of such skills to organizations relying on them.

References

[1]
Ajzen, I. (1991). The Theory of Planned Behavior, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179--211.
[2]
Bullen, C. V., Abraham, T., Gallagher, K., Kaiser, K. M., and Simon, J. (2007). Changing IT skills: The impact of sourcing strategies on in-house capability requirements. Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations, 5(2), 24--37, 39--46.
[3]
Carr, D., and Kizior, R. J. (2000). The case for continued COBOL education. IEEE Software, 17(2), 33--36.
[4]
Database Trends and Applications. (2011). Big Data Workhorse. Retrieved from http://www.dbta.com/Articles/Editorial/Think-About-It/Big-Data-Workhorse-The-Mainframe-79352.aspx on March 15, 2013.
[5]
Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of Information Technology," MIS Ouarterly, 13(3), 319--339.
[6]
Deci, E. and Ryan, R. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68--78.
[7]
Deci, E. L., and Ryan, R. M. (2008). Facilitating optimal motivation and psychological well-being across life's domains. Canadian Psychology, 49, 14--23.
[8]
Downey, J. P., McMurtrey, M. E., and Zeltmann, S. M. (2008). Mapping the MIS curriculum based on critical skills of new graduates: An empirical examination of IT professionals. Journal of Information Systems Education, 19(3), 351--363.
[9]
Fleming, M., and Couturier, G. (2002). Managing the development of a mainframe-based inquiry system for the internet. Industrial Management + Data Systems, 102(3), 203--210.
[10]
Gerth, A. B., and Rothman, S. (2007). The future IS organization in a flat world. Information Systems Management, 24(2), 103--111.
[11]
Harbert, T. (2011). A new job for mainframes? Computerworld, 45(13), 20--25.
[12]
Hewitt, Sue. "Defusing the demographic time-bomb." Human Resource Management International Digest 16.7 (2008): 3--5.
[13]
Ke, W. and Zhang, P. (2010). The effects of extrinsic motivations and satisfaction in open source software development, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 11(12), 784--808.
[14]
Krippendorff, K. (1980). Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
[15]
Lee, S. M., and Choong Kwon, L. (2006). IT Managers' requisite skills. Communications of the ACM, 49(4), 111--114.
[16]
Lee, Sooun, and Xiang Fang. "Perception gaps about skills requirement for entry-level IS professionals between recruiters and students: an exploratory study." Information Resources Management Journal (IRMJ) 21.3 (2008): 39--63.
[17]
Lepper, M. R. (1988). Motivational considerations in the study of instruction. Cognition and Instruction, 5, 289--309.
[18]
Lukmani, Y. M. (1972). Motivation to learn and language proficiency, Language Learning, 22(2), 261--273.
[19]
McAllister, Andrew J. "The Case for Teaching Legacy Systems Modernization." Information Technology: New Generations (ITNG), 2011 Eighth International Conference on. IEEE, 2011.
[20]
Nairn, G. (2008). The mainframe still needs to be mastered, Financial Times, (Nov 05), 5.
[21]
Qu, Wen Guang, Wonseok Oh, and Alain Pinsonneault. "The strategic value of IT insourcing: An IT-enabled business process perspective." The Journal of Strategic Information Systems 19.2 (2010): 96--108.
[22]
Pratt, M. K. (2012). Six key skills IT grads lack. Computerworld, 46(3), 18--20.
[23]
Porter, L. W., and Lawler, E. E. (1968). Managerial attitudes and performance. Homewood. IL: Irwin-Dorsey.
[24]
Ryan, R. (1995). Psychological needs and the facilitation of integrative processes. Journal of Personality, 63, 397--427.
[25]
System Z Academic Initiative Program. (n.d.) Retrieved March 21, 2013, from http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/education/academic/schools_na.html#texas
[26]
Weber, R. P. (1990). Basic Content Analysis, 2nd ed. Newbury Park, CA.
[27]
Clabby Analytics (2011) Mainframe Skills Report -- Sources of Mainframe Skill Training: Clabby Analytics

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
SIGMIS-CPR '13: Proceedings of the 2013 annual conference on Computers and people research
May 2013
208 pages
ISBN:9781450319751
DOI:10.1145/2487294
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 30 May 2013

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. legacy systems
  2. mainframes
  3. motivation

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

SIGMIS-CPR '13
Sponsor:
SIGMIS-CPR '13: 2013 Computers and People Research Conference
May 30 - June 1, 2013
Ohio, Cincinnati, USA

Acceptance Rates

SIGMIS-CPR '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 29 of 33 submissions, 88%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 300 of 480 submissions, 63%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • 0
    Total Citations
  • 239
    Total Downloads
  • Downloads (Last 12 months)3
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 10 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media