Innovation in IT education—practising what we preach

Abstract

The changing skills requirements for the information systems professionals of the nineties has forced many universities to reconsider their curriculum. The concept of a generic curriculum to meet the educational needs of all future IS professionals is obsolete and IS curriculum design must be targeted at specific career tracks. This paper describes the development of an innovative program to cultivate the "hybrid" business and information systems manager who can play a major role in strategy formulation for effective use of information technology. In order to sustain a high degree of relevancy to the needs of the business community, an action research approach is used which allows the students to build up case portfolios through an organizational cultural audit. These cases have initiated and supported considerable research work from Faculty and provide a longitudinal study of IS development, application and growth. In particular, they have been invaluable as input to our research program on IS strategy formulation as significant patterns of change have been seen to evolve. These relate to a number of contingent factors which would have been impossible to explore through individual research studies.