A CASE-BASED APPROACH TO INTEGRATING AN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY CURRICULUM

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A CASE-BASED APPROACH TO INTEGRATING AN
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY CURRICULUM

• Kathleen S. Hartzel
• William E. Spangler
• Mordechai Gal-Or
• Trevor H. Jones

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Presentation

• Context and Definition of Program
• Philosophy of definition
• University context
• Program drivers
• Program Courses and Content
• Case Addition
• Need and rationale
• Objective
• Approach
• Status

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Philosophy of Definition

• Dilemma of academic training balance
• Cannot be all things to all people
• Focus on internal strengths and reputation of
  graduates
• Focus on depth not breadth in core
• Allow breadth as choice in electives

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University Context

• Liberal arts university (general core)
• Major within School of Business
• Heavily tied to business (non-IT) education
• Limited credit hours available (186) for
  specific IT courses
• Internship credits available

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Program drivers

• Research and teaching focus of faculty
• Parent expectations
• Student expectations
• Employer expectations
• Employment market opportunities

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Course Content and Objectives

• Not vendor specific
• Systems architectures
• Database centric - focused on modeling
• Systems Analysis and design focused on SDLC and
  process modeling
• Application development focused on process
  logic
• Integration of subject components into holistic
  systems development perspective

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IT Program Core Structure
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Case - Need and Rationale

• Overcome silo approach to content delivery
• Provide practical, integrated forum for course
  content accumulation
• Demand students appreciate necessity for
  integrated knowledge set
• Provides a top down mechanism for defining
  lower class content requirements

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Case - Objective
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Case - Approach

• Case context is jointly determined (e.g. order
  entry sub-system)
• Each area defines own scope, parameters to
  fulfill course objectives
• Integration of area content to create single,
  unified case description
• Maintenance of components to allow
  re-use/modification over consecutive periods

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Case - Status

• Context defined sales order entry
• Case scope to be refined according to class
  requirements
• Conceptual requirements for each area (class)
  defined
• Working on documenting area scope and
  deliverables
• Planned implementation Fall 2004