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Absentee Paper (refereed)

Recommended Citation: Desai, A M. What Should the Content and Focus Be For the Core Information Systems Course? The Ongoing Debate. In The Proceedings of the Information Systems Education Conference 2006, v 23 (Dallas): §5115. ISSN: 1542-7382.

What Should the Content and Focus Be For the Core Information Systems Course? The Ongoing Debate

Refereed

16 pages

Alpana M. Desai    [a1] [a2]
Department of Computer Information Systems
University of Alaska Anchorage    [u1] [u2]
Anchorage, Alaska, USA    [c1] [c2]

There is an ensuing debate among academicians related to content and teaching approaches of the introductory information systems course typically required of all undergraduate business majors. (1) Should the core Information Systems (IS) course be offered in business schools as a separate course required of all business majors? Or should different functional departments within the business school integrate core IS concepts in appropriate courses within their discipline? (2) What is the best approach in terms of content and focus for teaching this course – the traditional, systems development approach (henceforth referred to as traditional approach) versus the integrative, interdisciplinary functional approach (henceforth referred to as integrative approach)? Questions like these have generated much discussion among faculty at business schools and have resulted in an ongoing debate as to the content area and focus of the core IS course. The interest in such discussion stems from changing business practices; the evolving nature of technology; pervasiveness of information systems in other business disciplines; and students’ perceptions of the lack of intrinsic value of a core MIS course for non-MIS majors. All these factors have contributed to accompanying challenges of teaching the core IS course. We attempt to answer the afore-mentioned questions by comparing the traditional and integrative approaches. We do extensive analyses of surveys conducted and data collected by proponents of traditional and integrative approaches. We also discuss the survey conducted by the authors, and analyze the data collected.

Keywords: undergraduate introductory information systems course, IS 2002, IS2002.1, AACSB, curriculum

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