TUTORIAL: USING IS MAPPING FOR CURRICULUM IMPROVEMENT AND ACCREDITATION

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TUTORIALUSING IS MAPPING FOR CURRICULUM
IMPROVEMENT AND ACCREDITATION

• John H. Reynolds
• George Nezlek
• School of CIS, Grand Valley State University
• Allendale, MI 49401 USA

Jeffrey P. Landry Herbert E. Longenecker,
Jr. University of South Alabama School of
CIS Mobile, AL 36688
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Introduction

• This second of a two-part tutorial will
  demonstrate the usefulness of the mapping process
  demonstrated in the first tutorial. A set of
  aggregate and detailed reports will be used to
  demonstrate how curriculum assessment and
  improvements can be modeled, and how
  accreditation self-studies can be facilitated.
  The software is accessible from
  (http//www.iseducation.org).

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Overview

• The tutorial will consist of
• Demonstrated scenarios for analyzing curriculum
  assessment, improvement, and accreditation
  self-study
• Demonstrations of ad hoc scenarios suggested by
  you
• An opportunity for you analyze the assessment,
  improvement, and self-study of your curriculum

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Assessment Scenario 1

• Task
• An instructor is interested in knowing how
  students performed on the IS exit exam in areas
  taught in her course.
• Example 1a
• Pamela Smith, instructor at USouthAl, is
  interested in knowing whether the IS exit exam is
  testing students on material she teaches in ISC
  434 Advanced Databases

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Assessment Scenario 1 (cont.)

• Example 1b
• Bart Longenecker of USouthAl observes that some
  students (i.e. in senior project) lack adequate
  data modeling skills. He wonders how the
  students have been performing on the IS exit exam
  on data modeling questions. I wonder how they
  performed on the database LUs taught in our CIS
  324 (database) course?

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Assessment Scenario 2

• Task
• A student asks, What marketable skills can I
  expect to have when I graduate?
• Example
• Jeremy Taylor, first semester freshman declaring
  a CIS major at USouthAl, wonders how marketable
  he will be in four more years.

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Assessment Scenario 3

• Task
• A student asks, what marketable skills do I have
  now that I am about to graduate?
• Example
• Jeremy, now a senior IS major, wants a breakdown
  of the marketable skills he has gained.

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Assessment Scenario 4

• Task
• A dean wants to compare student test performance
  to students taking the exam nationally.
• Example 4a
• Who is our top performing student? asks Roy
  Daigle, after the last group of IS majors at
  USouthAl have completed the Spring 2004 IS exit
  exam. What was his score? How did he rank
  nationally?

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Assessment Scenario 4 (cont.)

• Example 4b
• How did our students, in general, perform on the
  exam, compared to all schools and other
  non-business school IS programs? We had both
  graduate and undergraduate students taking the
  exam.--Daigle

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Assessment Scenario 5

• Task
• Assessing outcomes for IS majors.
• Example
• A colleague at another school, upon running into
  Roy Daigle at ISECON, asks, Im looking for a
  list of outcomes for IS majors. What do you
  suggest?

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Accreditation Scenario 1

• Task
• An IS department chair responds to an
  accreditation teams request for a report of
  semester hour coverage (SHC) in each of six areas
  of IS core knowledge
• Example
• Although Roy has approximated SHC in past
  accreditation self-studies, he suggests to the
  team that a CCER report he uses will provide a
  richer evaluation of coverage, emphasizing the
  breadth and depth of coverage across six IS core
  areas.

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Accreditation Scenario 2

• Task
• A department chair wants to report on student
  performance in each of six IS core areas for an
  accreditation self-study.
• Example
• Roy wants an aggregate report of IS student
  performance on the Spring 04 IS exit exam,
  broken down by IS core areas for accreditation.

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Accreditation Scenario 3

• Task
• A department chair wants to determine where an IS
  core area is taught in his curriculum.
• Example
• Roy wants to know how many and which IS courses
  at USouthAl teach objectives in the analysis and
  design core area, so that he can demonstrate to
  an accreditation team that these skills are
  developed throughout the four-year program.

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Accreditation Scenario 4

• Task
• A department chair wants to describe how an IS
  core area is taught throughout his curriculum.
• Example
• Roy Daigle wants documented evidence, for the CIS
  advisory board, of how modern programming
  language skills are taught in the IS curriculum.
  He wants the board to get a sense of the variety
  and intensity of coverage in programming.

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Accreditation Scenario 5

• Task
• An instructor wants to know how her course
  contributes to accreditation standards.
• Example
• Pam Smith wants to know how her ISC 434 course
  contributes to accreditation standards. Which
  of the six core areas do I cover? I hope I am
  covering the data management area with breadth
  and depth? And some modern programming, too.

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Improvement Scenario 1

• Task
• An instructor, responding to IS exit exam results
  that show inadequate student performance in areas
  taught in her course, wants to make a short list
  of possible course improvements.
• Example
• Pam wants to review exam results for USouthAl
  students in advanced database concepts covered by
  her ISC 434 course. She wants to focus attention
  on her local course objectives that teach
  learning units with poor scores and target areas
  for improvement.

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Improvement Scenario 2

• Task
• A dean/dept. chair/curriculum committee asks what
  if How will (adding/removing/replacing) a
  course in our curriculum affect the
  (breadth/depth/content) of (learning unit/IS core
  area) coverage?
• Example
• A department chair, responding to the increasing
  need for networking and security skills in
  industry, wants to add greater breadth and depth
  of coverage in networks and security in his IS
  program.

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Ad hoc scenarios

• Task
• Does someone have an interesting assessment,
  improvement, or accreditation self-study task?
• Example
• that we can use to create an example?

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Analyze your curriculum

• Now, run various reports for your own curriculum.
  
• Select and deselect mapped courses.
• Run various reports to answer questions about
• assessment
• improvement
• accreditation