COCA

This chapter introduces the concept-oriented course architecture (COCA); an architecture that utilizes IS concept as a fundamental building block to guide a methodology for designing and teaching IS courses. COCA aims at supporting rapid composition of IS course/curriculum out of a sound and complete set of IS concepts provided by well-specified business models, market or standardization organizations such as ACM and IEEE. COCA is defined, composed of three roles: (R1) concept providers, (R2) a concepts registry, and (R3) IS course/curriculum designers. These roles interact through four operations in order to design/teach an IS course/curriculum: (O1) publish, (O2) consider, (O3) validate, and (O4) teach. This methodology, based on a flexible, scalable, well-specified architecture of the IS concepts and their organization, will assist the complex and resource-consuming task of designing and teaching IS courses in the information age, where the IS tools, including management information systems (MIS) and information technology (IT) are rapidly evolving.

Industry-Academic Partnerships in Information Systems Education

Several thousand universities worldwide participate in industry-academic partnerships as a way to expose their students to “real-world” issues and technologies and to provide them skills that will facilitate their transition from the university to the workplace. This chapter highlights several of the leading IT-focused, industry-academic programs such as Hyperion’s Academic Alliance Program, the Teradata University Network, and SAP’s University Alliance Program; and references similar initiatives from Cisco, SUN, and IBM. The focus of the chapter is from an industry practioner’s perspective; it covers what motivates companies to launch these types of programs, what the programs’ goals are, and what benefits accrue to the participating company and university. Information systems and technology (IS&T) are evolving so quickly that universities are continually challenged to keep abreast of the latest developments to ensure that their curricula and programs are current. On one hand, IT programs are pressured by various stakeholders—deans, incoming students, parents, businesses recruiting on campus, and so forth—to keep their programs current and relevant to these constituents’ needs. On the other hand, faculty and IT programs cannot chase the latest fads and each new innovation, if they are to offer a stable learning environment. The significant costs—in terms of time, training, technical support, curriculum revisions, and so forth—involved in deploying commercial software in an academic setting makes selecting which partnerships to pursue an important and far-reaching decision. The benefits can be significant, but the faculty need to understand up front, the expectations and level of commitment needed to make these kinds of collaborations successful. By gaining a better understanding of how industry views these programs, academics will be better able to assess these alliances and determine which best support and align with their programs’ goals and learning objectives. Developing students who can join companies as new employees and IT leaders and quickly contribute to a firm’s success is something that both universities and businesses strive for. But, it requires a mutual understanding of the skills that will be needed, vehicles for developing those skills within the students, and a buy-in from faculty to develop the necessary curriculum and teaching resources. This chapter contends that successfully managed industry-academic partnerships can be a vehicle for developing these capabilities, while enriching learning opportunities for students.

A Dynamic Structural Model of Education and Skills Requirements for Careers in Information Systems

This chapter presents a dynamic structural model of the relative contribution and importance of education and skills required of information systems (IS) professionals. Model development took into account the technical skills found in many tertiary IS programs, other business-oriented academic studies, and soft skills sought by employers in new graduates. The model also includes features of the working environment which influence the career progress of IS graduates. Acknowledging the importance of these four areas, the authors present a second-order structural model that links these areas and compares the application of this model to IS students and decision makers who employ graduates. The model fits the data for the two groups and exhibits some unexpected outcomes in the area of soft skills, with students attributing more importance to soft skills than IS managers. The model was employed to identify gender differences in perceptions of the relative contribution and importance of education and skills required of IS professionals. The model also includes features of the working environment which influence the career progress of IS graduates. The model was used to describe how attitudes and perceptions of IS professionals change across career stages as measured by age groupings. Changes in perceptions across four major age groupings show significant differences with respect to these factors according to age groups and by inference, career stage. The model allows, with some confidence, a quantitative interpretation of the relative importance of the respective variables from the perspectives of the student and employer stakeholder groups toward the education and professional development of IS professionals. The model also suggests the presence of contrasting, gender-based quantitative views of the relative importance of the respective variables to the education and professional development of IS professionals.

Aligning Learning with Industry Requirements

A review of studies of practitioners of software development reveals a depth of mismatch between their needs and formal education. The conclusion to be drawn is that industry has made a long-term shift in its requirements of graduates from technical subjects, laying emphasis on personal and affective attributes. Concern has been expressed that the underlying “socialisation” requirement for a graduate to achieve “working professional” status is very poorly addressed in formal education. After establishing a framework for comparison between information technology (IT) formal education and industry requirements, this chapter discusses an action research study based on applying nontraditional and innovative learning models to address mismatches identified. Results suggest that models which focus on independent learning and soft skills prepare students to enter industry with the ability to engage in the career-long, professional learning required for success in professional practice.

Teaching Business Intelligence in Higher Education

In the 1990s there was considerable growth in implementations of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Companies expected these systems to support many of the day-to-day business transactions. The growth in ERP implementations had a resultant impact on the demand for ERP skills. Many universities recognised this demand and the potential of using ERP systems software as a teaching tool and endeavoured to incorporate ERP systems into their curriculum. ERP systems have now evolved to incorporate more strategic components such as business intelligence (BI) solutions. Universities and ERP vendors are investigating ways in which curriculum can be developed to support these new solutions. This chapter discusses a blended approach adopted by a university in the development and implementation of BI curriculum.

Enhancing the Employability of ICT Students with Hybrid Skills

This chapter describes an empirical study that aimed to collect UK small business managers’ views on the importance of staff skills in supporting their business operations and success. The study formed an important part of the HAPPINESS Project funded by the European Commission. The project proposed a hybrid skills model for identifying skill needs to meet the demand in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) across Europe. It is argued that a competent ICT worker should possess not only technical skills, but also other skills such as skills in communication and management, and skills to enable them to operate effectively in a business environment. This argument is discussed in the literature and supported by the empirical evidence collected in the survey conducted with UK small business managers. The hybrid training approach proposed by HAPPINESS attempts to address the problem of skills shortage in ICT by developing appropriate training needs identification methods and matching the identified personal training needs with a proposed hybrid training provision. The challenge, however, remains for higher education institutes and training organizations to prepare ICT students to respond to the hybrid skill needs of enterprises.

Relevance of Computing Programmes to Industry Needs in Jordan's Higher Education Institutes

This chapter aims to articulate the concerns and issues surrounding the relevance of computing programmes of higher education institutes in Jordan to market/employer needs. The information technology (IT) industry in Jordan has directed many criticisms to Jordanian institutes of higher education regarding the structure and content of programmes offered by IT faculties and departments, despite relentless effort to fulfilling shortages in the local and regional markets for adequate IT graduates. The chapter presents the findings of a local survey to assess the relevance of computing programmes to market/employer needs in Jordan. The survey identifies many of the skill gaps that exist and in acute need to be covered by a new breed of computing curricula in Jordanian institutes of higher education. Also, the survey emphasises the three most relevant areas of knowledge in computing programmes to industries’ needs: (1) systems/software development/engineering and management; (2) electronic business development and management; and (3) system/software development tools and languages.

Creating an Entrepreneurial Mindset

Change in the structure and profile of the industrial base in Ireland emphasises the importance of the small firm sector in certain growth sectors. One such sector is the information and communication technology (ICT) sector, which now demands a more enterprising graduate. This chapter emphasises the importance of third-level1 education in preparing students for their career, either as employee or entrepreneur. We discuss how entrepreneurship education, through its broad and integrative philosophy accommodates the changing workplace demands. It links together the synergy of enterprising activity and the small firm ICT sector through education courses, specifically entrepreneurship education. This is achieved through the adoption of the process framework for ICT entrepreneurship education. Describing how they can be modified to facilitate and encourage the more creative and enterprising mindset in the ICT student, we present two courses that have been successfully implemented at the University of Limerick.

Leveraging Diversity in Information Systems and Technology Education in the Global Workplace

In this chapter we consider the educational needs of the globally diverse information technology (IT) sector and a curriculum that has been developed in order to respond to them. We begin by discussing two human resource (HR) gaps that are affecting the preparation of tomorrow’s IT workforce. The first gap is a participation gap, which is related, in part, to the under representation in recruitment and retention of students with particular demographic profiles in information systems and technology (IS&T) education. The second gap is a knowledge gap, which is related to the globalization of the IT field and the challenges of developing compatible curriculum and pedagogical practices that will prepare students for careers in such a field. We argue that diversity is a lens that can be used to both understand these HR gaps and to develop curricular responses to them. We do this by considering, as a case study, a course developed and taught in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Pennsylvania State University that is intended to address these gaps. This course—Human Diversity in the Global Information Economy—is offered to exemplify a way of addressing the diversity dimension of the IT skill set.

Ethics for the Graduating Class

Teaching ethics is not about teaching right versus wrong, but is about teaching informed discernment, conscientious decision making, and balanced living. So should teaching these behaviors be the domain of higher education? For many years and in many institutions—even today—the teaching of ethics has not been embraced as part of the charge of higher education. However, as society has had to assimilate technology and as it has had to face the repercussions of unethical and illegal behaviors, one questions the ethical training of the professionals making the decisions. Since these professionals are the products of higher education, many institutions and accreditation boards are requiring their students to have exposure to ethical philosophy. Students in the technical fields may not benefit from a purely philosophical presentation of ethics. In fact, introducing the ethical dilemmas associated with real-life decisions about technology can be very formative and revealing to the student. While institutions have always been teaching students how to debug technology problems, institutions also need to teach students how to debug ethical decisions—to become aware that ethical decisions are also technology problems to be analyzed, understood, and appropriately resolved. Challenges to the goal of presenting ethical decisions as technical dilemmas arise from a variety of factors, however. The students and professors may be from different generations, from different cultural backgrounds, and from different professional experiences— and simply are of different points in personal development. Teaching ethics needs to identify these differences and develop the common ground for a shared, ethical perspective enabling a healthy stance for the profession. The arena facing the teaching of ethics in the technical professions and approaches to utilize are identified and described. The on-going challenges limiting the effort are explained. Altogether, a composite of the ethical dimension of graduating college students in the information systems and information technology (IS&T) fields is developed.