[AISWorld] Results - IS MBA Core Course Best Practices

[Galletta, Dennis]

To the AIS Community,

Some time ago I posted the following question about best practices in the MIS Core course in the MBA program. I received only few responses, but I finally got one today that I have been waiting for.

This page is stored on my server at http://galletta.business.pitt.edu/corecourse/responses.htm

Thanks for your consideration and I hope this arrives in time for you to use at least something from it.

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The Posting:

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Some survey results have shown that the IS course tends to be ranked quite low in the set of required courses in many MBA programs, but there are many notable exceptions. We have all heard stories of universities that have paid close attention to the IS core course and elevated it to the highest-rated course in the curriculum. We have also heard from schools that have cut IS from their core curriculum, and have seen professors in our field worldwide, both tenured and untenured, lose their jobs as a result.

We have had an "enrollments" wiki page at AIS for about 4 or 5 years now. The page has suffered from dozens and dozens of spam attacks and many, but not all, of the spammers' alterations have been removed. Part of that wiki has never caught on: the "best practices" page. One notable exception is that Hope Koch has placed some valuable resources on that page: http://enrollments.aisnet.org/Best%20Practices.ashx

As we complete our 2010-2011 academic year here, it is time to reflect on what to do differently next year to keep the curriculum re-designers from continuing to bark and bite at our heels. Some notable suggestions have included weaving SAP into our course, providing more formulas and graphs (e.g., adoption curve, long tail, etc.) to be more quantitative and provide more tools for students, and using web design as a non-technical but non-trivial exercise that can be done in multiple phases.

There are, undoubtedly, many more tools and techniques that some of you have found valuable. This request is a plea to share your valuable tips so that we can all benefit from them. The more difficulties we all have with the course, the more our entire field will suffer. If the core course, for instance, disappears from many curricula, our field will shrink and wither. We will lose slots and colleagues in current programs. Those of us with PhD programs will find fewer outlets to hire our PhD students. It is time to fight back and we will benefit from sharing our best practices.

There are two groups I'm addressing:

-          The people who have success with some particular lecture/discussion/application materials

-          The people who NEED these application materials

So to avoid the wiki/spam problem, please email me with some good and tidy lectures/slides/exercises/assignments, and other materials that you think contributes positively to your course. Your overall course does not have to be highly rated, because the particular set of materials that you think is helpful is the focus. Most helpful would be single assignments/lecture plans and least helpful would be "here's my wonderful course" and just submitting a syllabus.

The best alternative will be links to your materials, rather than giant emailed PowerPoint decks, but I am not fussy and will find a way to report to all, even if it means putting them on my server. So please do not send materials you want to keep private.


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Responses:

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We teach a required IS course in the Kelley direct online MBA program. The focus of the course is on presenting the importance of IT in the business by looking at three key areas: creating value from IT, managing IT costs and managing IT risks.  The course covers ten key topics: IT leadership, Cost and Value of IT, Managing IT projects,  ERP systems and projects, IT governance, IT risk and security, Vendor management, Enterprise Architecture.

We use the book Adventures of an IT leader (Harvard Press) as the primary book for the class. The book allows the students to walk in the shoes of newly appointed CIO (who comes from the business side and does not have any technology background).  This context ensures that the majority of the students are able to relate to the primary character in the book and the challenges/opportunities encountered.  We have found that the engaging nature of the Adventures book combined with appropriate cases/articles (we use HBS cases as well as a number of MISQE articles) on each of these topics allows all students (irrespective of their background) to be very engaged in understanding why each of these topics is of importance to them as they progress in their careers. We intentionally do not spend any time covering technology topics, although reference to emerging technologies and their role is made in the lectures as well as in the book itself.

Assignments take the form of group case analysis, individual analysis, online discussion forums as well as reflection documents.

Ramesh Venkataraman

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Hi Dennis,

I've been teaching the required core MBA class at BC for several years. Over this time it has evolved from one of the least liked courses to one of the best liked courses.  I even one MBA Instructor of the Year in 2010, mainly due to this course.

The main distinctive elements of the course are:
-              Heavy orientation towards managerial and strategic (rather than technical) aspects of IS
-              Heavy use of case studies, mainly Harvard cases
-              Heavy use of social media
-              Basic tech terminology is covered in a wiki page student read on their own - no class time for that material

The course is hosted on a Social Text wiki. The easiest thing for me to do would be to invite you to be a member of the wiki. Then you'd be able to see everything except the "private" part of the wiki where student assignments are kept. I'll send you an invite in a minute.

Note that we also have a half-semester core IS class for the undergraduates that has a similar managerial/strategic focus (but no Harvard cases). This course is also very well regarded. Most instructors use John Gallaugher's "open source" textbook in some fashion for this course.

Cheers,

Rob

Robert G. Fichman, Professor
BC Carroll School of Management, Information Systems Department
Tel: 617-552-0471; Office: 410 Fulton Hall; Web: www2.bc.edu/~fichman

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Hi Dennis,
I may have sent you these links before, but the material remains updated:
There's a textbook available free online & in low-coste print version at: http://bit.ly/ISbook (it's currently v 1.1 and the next version, 1.2, will be posted mid July) According to reports from the publisher, 6 of 10 IS programs listed in the US News Top Undergrad IS list have adopted the text for at least one of their courses.  There are sections on many current topics including social media, SaaS/Cloud, cases on Facebook, Google, and more.

My personal material for the course is at: http://gallaugher.com/chapters - it includes the most recent podcast (which was Spring '10, I've been on sabbatical), my personal PowerPoint slides, replicas of wiki assignments, etc. Everyone's free to raid the material.

You'll also find a blog that I frequently use to post relevant material on the text at http://gallaugher.com  (blog signup at top of page), many of these posts are included in the Ning community you'll find on that same page (see right-hand side of this page - currently many of the contributions come from me, but I'd love to see more info flow from others & I'd welcome new members), and I also use my Twitter account for similar updates (@gallaugher).  Jerry Kane's initiated the use of the #ISWorld hashtag for Twitter.  Our community should aggressively leverage this.

I hope others are able to capture some of the success we've enjoyed at BC.  Our program has grown four fold in four years since we've re-vamped our undergrad core course (that's what the book is based on), and we've launched many other initiatives that have helped us 'capture the cool'.  Employment is way up, as is tech-focused entrepreneurship (resulting in the launch of several funded businesses).  We use the same text in our evening MBA program.  Goal of the text was to wrap what usually appears in a course pack around more durable theory.  And given that we'd often make course packs from WSJ, Fortune, HBR, etc., there isn't a specific undergrad vs. grad focus - most programs can't assume prior biz knowledge among incoming students & a good text should be motivating to all.

Also - for those interested in using mobile & social throughout the b-school experience I gave a talk on this at Apple's AcademiX conference last friday.  The slides are already online, but they're sparse - the real value will be in the podcast of the talk, which will be posted by Apple  in the next 2-3 weeks.
http://education.apple.com/academix/

Finally: I wanted to let you know that I reached out to Geoff Gloeckler at BusinessWeek last year when I'd noticed the magazine once again failed to include IS in its speciality rankings.  This is a tremendous oversight (the magazine even ranked "calculus" as a management speciality discipline).  Goeff assured me that IS would be considered in subsequent rankings (haven't seen the specialty rankings this year - they often show up weeks after the primary rankings).  But this is something AIS may want to more actively engage on.  I had e-mailed Joey George on this last year - am assuming he & the new leadership have been engaging the opinion leaders in the media.

Hope this is helpful.  I look forward to hearing other resources you gather.
Best,
John
--
John Gallaugher, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems Carroll School of Management - Boston College http://www.gallaugher.com - http://twitter.com/gallaugher
Textbook: http://bit.ly/ISbook - Phone: 617-552-2519

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Hi Dennis,

just going through old emails and came across this. I am not sure whether this will be considered spam, the call is up to you. I have had great success teaching in the required IS core after struggling very early on at Cornell. What I ended up doing was writing a book that captured what I had learned and was based on a philosophical foundation that I had developed over time. I think the method works (I won two teaching awards at Cornell, a school where the bar is extremely high) and have had the highest rated course at Grenoble in both the MBA and undergraduate (second year) course.

The book is a distillation of some strongly held belief. Here they are:
1. The course must be practical. Business school students, and even more so MBAs, have little patience for theory for the sake of theory. They want to learn how to do something. Note, that does not mean that we should not teach theory, but it speaks to how we should teach theory. The trick is to provide real-world problems and have the students learn the theory as they solve them. Then you can tell them it was theory... at that point they do begin to see the value.
2. Business school students, and even more so MBAs, are self-selecting
*out* of engineering. That means that they dont come with an innate love for "all that is IT." To counter that bias the design of a course needs to start with the question of what *they* need to know, rather than what *the
field* knows. I believe the bulk of business school students, for whom the required IS course is (should be) designed, need to be able to evaluate technology for business (with a strong emphasis on strategy) and need to be productive partners of the IS function (know enough of what happens there to be able to collaborate).
3. Modern students do not like textbooks. They need to be engaged. This does not mean that we must be in the edu-tainment business, however, we need to be smart and remove all possible (useless) obstacles to student engagement. Teaching style and writing style (of the materials) are easy wins, we cant fail there.

Based on the above consideration here is how the book works:
1. It uses minicases at the beginning of each chapter (see point #1). A minicase can be read in class in 5 min (ensuring everyone knows it), it presents a realistic (often real) situation that the student could credibly encounter in their next job out of the program, it shows, thorough discussion that students would today be fairly unprepared to tackle the problem. I invest minimal time (<20min) at the beginning of a new chapter in a minicase, but that investment pays off handsomely. a) it dispels the notion that this stuff is irrelevant as the decisions are realistic, b) it dispels the notion that this stuff is obvious (a trap that exists when people only see a model or framework in abstract with well orchestrated examples in one-way lectures), c) it creates great energy in the classroom to carry the ensuing (highly interactive and therefore not boring) lecture.
2. As for the material covered, the book focuses as quickly as possible on the topics most relevant to modern business school students (see point #2 above). There are many topics that have been popular in IS research, where the body of work and expertise of faculty is large, but will simply feel irrelevant to modern business students. That material should be avoided (for as painful as it feels to make that decision the first time).
3. The textbook does not read like a textbook (see point #3), it has a colloquial style with lots of quotes from managers and examples, more akin to consulting reports. I am told by many students that the book was not a painful read as they expected. That's, for an IS book, success in my opinion!

I have been told by some colleagues who use it that the design of the book has carried thorough in their design of slides (which I believe should remain a personal thing), spurring them to make them practical. There are many other design features of the book (eg. full lenght cases, like the Lands' End one you know well) that stem from and use the frameworks discussed in the related chapter. But I think this email is long enough, so I'll stop here!

I am attaching the forward (LINK TO ATTACHMENT)<http://galletta.business.pitt.edu/corecourse/Piccoli.doc> and intro to the second edition of the book (I just finished the MS, new book should come out end of this year). I really believe it works, and I have heard good things from those who adopted it.
At Cornell the bar was very high, you could not turn off students, as you would not make tenure. So, in order to get good ratings without compromising rigor and quality, I had to reinvent my approach. I think the outcome is an approach that works and I distilled that approach in the book. If it can work for others I will be really happy. If there is enough interest I have also played with the idea of creating a FB group where we can share tips, examples and the videos I use.  If that is already underway I could join that effort. It is a lot of work, so I have been a bit reluctant to do it until I was sure there was interest.

Ok, here is my stream of consciousness. Use what you feel makes sense.

Here are the comments on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Information-Systems-Managers-Texts-Cases/product-reviews/047008703X/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_pop_hist_all?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&qid=1305623374&sr=1-1-catcorr


Hope this is not considered spam. Obviously I believe in what I did, but like Steve Jobs when he talks about his products I am sure I come across as a marketer :-) I am sure the book will work for those who share at least some of the philosophical foundations of my design. But each lecturer needs to make the decision

Thanks for your efforts in this area! -G

Gabe Piccoli

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Dennis,

I play a business game called "Flowers For The World" which I developed many years ago. The game acts as a general introduction to the problems of decision-making in organizations and the need for IS/IT. I have used the game in a wide variety of courses, from programming and database, to core courses at the graduate level.

I am currently using the game in the core MSc in Management course "IS/IT for Managers." Students like the fast pace, and I use their experience to talk about IS strategy. I attach the introductory PPT slides for your viewing.

LINK TO PPT SLIDES<http://galletta.business.pitt.edu/corecourse/Moores.pptx>

Regards,

Trevor T. Moores
Professor of IS
ESSEC Business School
Paris, France

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Dennis,

These are the topics that I covered in an IS core MBA course:

Cultural Considerations for Managers;
The Web 2.0 Executive.
Electronic Commerce
Decision Styles and Support Tools
IT Enabled Organisational Integration and Transformation Knowledge Management IS Strategy & Planning IS and Work Systems Global IT Offshoring

The class was 26 hours total - run intensively over 4 weeks.

The last time I taught it was 2008, so the materials are a little dated now.

What I can offer that is more updated is my current MSc course material.
This is not MBA but specialised Masters. The students are doing MSc in E-Business and Knowledge Management. The specific course - IS6600 - is on Global IS and KM Applications in Organisations. See:
http://www.is.cityu.edu.hk/staff/isrobert/is6600.htm

Note, some materials are in Chinese. Some links are dead.

Robert Davison




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Dennis F. Galletta                      Professor of Business Administration
University of Pittsburgh                 and Director, Katz Doctoral Program
282a Mervis Hall                            Katz Graduate School of Business
Phone +1 412-648-1699                                  Pittsburgh, PA  15260
E-mail: galletta @                                       Fax +1 412-648-1693
        katz.pitt.edu                       homepage: www.pitt.edu/~galletta<http://www.pitt.edu/~galletta>
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