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Challenges for Curriculum Design in IT Education
Abstract
Widespread applications of computer technology prompted the adoption of “Introduction to Computers” course in many college curriculums. Many business schools provided the computer literacy training through Information Systems curriculums. Growing popularity of the basic computing course created pressure in both computing facility and staffing support. The rapidly changing technology posted major challenges for designers of Information Systems (IS) curriculum. Careful decision must be made to select the appropriate technological platform, and to balance the technological capability with a shrinking budget. A greater challenge was to design IS courses for students who had no intention of pursuing the vigorous IS professional training. These students lacked the same motivation of those choosing a career in IS, and experienced great difficulties in adjusting to the pace of a traditional IS courses. At the same time, the course designer must consider the prior computing experiences of the students, and changing expectation of students, faculty, and other stakeholders. The huge discrepancy in technical backgrounds and career interests posted challenges in instructional delivery. The course designer must be selective in bundling relevant materials into the limited time of a single course, while providing sufficient challenge and learning experience relative to the prior technical backgrounds of students. This paper reports research findings of an exploratory survey seeking answers to some of these questions. We originally planned to apply an identical survey instrument at both the University of Guam and at the Fairleigh Dickinson University, each campus with approximately 200 students enrollment for the “Introduction to Computers” course. However, only a portion of the data collected from the University of Guam was available prior to the proceeding publication. We expected a much larger sample size with updated results.
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