1. Drew Hwang dhwang@csupomona.edu Louise Soe llsoe@csupomona.edu Computer Information Systems, Cal Poly Pomona dhwang@csupomona.edu llsoe@csupomona.edu 12/12/20151

2.  Background of study  Literature Review  Research methods  Findings  Career Track Categories  Career Track Frequencies  Conclusions / Recommendations  Naming strategies & numbers  Career Track Structures 12/12/20152

3.  Study began in 2006 when our department was reviewing and changing its curriculum  What do other programs offer?  How do we compare?  What should we change?  Drew reviewed career tracks in 4-year schools with MIS/IS/CIS majors or programs  “Career Track Design in IS Curriculum: A Case Study,” Information Systems Education Journal, November 2007, 5(29), 1-18  Presented at ISECON 2007  Drew updated data for this paper in Feb-May 2009 12/12/20153

4. 1. Normative – develop normative standards to ensure “body of knowledge” and skill sets are part of the curriculum  Model curricula  IS 2002  IT 2004  Working group on new model curriculum: Topi, Valacich, Kaiser, Nunamaker, Sipior, de Vreede, and Wright. “”Revising the IS Model Curriculum: Rethinking the Approach and the Process.” Communications of the Association for Information Systems, Vol. 20, pp 728-740. 12/12/20154

5. 2. Descriptive – describes what exists – our study fits here  What exists  Longenecker & Feinstein (1989)  Gill and Hu (1999) looked at changes  AACSB school curricula  Chen, Danesh, Willhardt, 1991  Heinrichs and Banerjee (2002)  Kung, Yang and Zhang (2006)  Comparisons to model curricula  MacKinnon, 2003  Williams and Pomykalski (2006) 12/12/20155

6.  Curriculum with diversity  Broad spectrum of knowledge and skills –  Curriculum with specificity  Concentrations in one or more subfields  Career track model falls within this part of the spectrum  Other names for career tracks: options, emphases, concentrations, specializations, specialties, paths, certificates, clusters, support areas 12/12/20156

7.  “Generic IS curriculum is outdated” (Lee, Trauth and Farwell (1995, p. 333)  “Single career track” IS professional is “outdated” (Lightfoot, 1999)  Specialization occurs in graduate programs (Ehie, 2002)  No relationship between IS course specialization and initial full-time job placement and starting salary (Ross, et. al 2004) 12/12/20157

8.  Between February and May, 2009, Drew reviewed curricula of 450 U.S. business schools with baccalaureate IS programs  http://www.univsource.com/bus.htm http://www.univsource.com/bus.htm  He looked at every school’s website to identify those with career tracks or specializations  Built a database  Analyzed his findings 12/12/20158

9.  110 /450 (24.5%) had career tracks or specializations  No standardized way to name career tracks  No standard way to define what courses belong in a career track  No standard way to define how many courses make up a track During our analysis, we clustered them into categories based on names and what courses they included 12/12/20159

10.  IS Fields: Information Systems, Information Technology, Computer Information Systems, Management Information Systems  IS subfields: Networking, Decision Support Systems  Referent disciplines: Accounting Information Systems  Job names: Business analyst 12/12/201510

11.  Track curriculum varied in size:  defined from beginning to end  Could be 2 to 5 courses beyond a common core  Could be very similar to other tracks within the same program (sometimes one class differentiated two tracks)  Could involve other programs (e.g., accounting)  Could be defined by student and an advisor 12/12/201511

12.  First, based on Track name  Then looked at courses listed for career tracks (since different schools defined this differently) if we were unsure  Then classified them into groups – tried to hit right granularity 12/12/201512

13. CategoryNumber IS Disciplines (CIS/CS/IT/MIS) 75 Web Technologies / E-commerce 44 Applications Development 42 Networking & Telecommunications 33 Information Assurance28 Business Functional Applications (Accounting, Administration, ERP, Finance, Operations Management) 24 CategoryNumber Information Management –data + another word (warehousing, structures, mining, database management, etc.) 17 Business Systems Analysis 13 Specialized IS / Studies (education, human factors, consulting, spatial systems, etc.) 14 End user support /training 8 Decision Support8 12/12/201513

14. Number of TracksFrequency of Programs % of total 11110.0% 25550.0% 32320.9% 554.5% 632.2% 721.8% 8 or 900 1010.9% TOTAL110100% 12/12/201514

15.  Most schools (80.9%) with tracks have 1 to 3  Probably due to resources and complexity  Track naming is idiosyncratic – we assume it is a faculty decision, probably influenced by:  Subfields in which they specialize –  In older subfields, track names vary less  In newer subfields, more variation for similar tracks  Names attractive to prospective employers  Representation of faculty areas of expertise  Schools seem to update tracks in line with new technologies and opportunities for jobs. 12/12/201515

16.  No consistent track structure among these programs  Tracks with same name at 2 schools may vary widely  Highly structured (no choices) to highly flexible (determined by student and advisor)  May be interdisciplinary in nature or not  2 tracks in same program may have courses that are mutually exclusive or may vary by only one course  IS programs within business schools they may be partnered with referent disciplines, which influences curriculum offerings. 12/12/201516

17.  7 categories represent standards in IS field – well established  Applications Development, IS Disciplines, Systems / Business Analysis, Networking / Telecommunications, Information Management, Decision Support, End-user computing – note the last two are dwindling.  2 categories represent more recent IT areas  Web Development / E-Commerce  Information Assurance  Business Functional Applications category  stresses individual business functional areas  Specialized Information Systems / Studies  a catchall category 12/12/201517

18.  Programs reviewing their career tracks should continue to scan the environment and the career opportunities available to students  The newest model curriculum task force is working in the area of a career track model curriculum – their findings and recommendations may influence future career tracks. 12/12/201518

19.  Longitudinal review in 2 years to see what is changing, especially in this period of uncertainty  Compare characteristics of schools with career tracks with those that do not  Compare existing tracks with model curricula, especially when new model with career specializations is in place 12/12/2015Hwang & Soe, ISECON, 200919

20.  Comments?  Ideas? 12/12/2015Hwang & Soe, ISECON, 200920