Renewal of an information systems curriculum to support career based tracks: A case study

• Main Authors: GOTTIPATI, Swapna, SHANKARARAMAN, Venky, SHIM, Kyong Jin
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2020
• Subjects: Information Systems curriculum; Industry needs; national level job skills requirements; survey findings; curriculum framework; Computer Sciences; Curriculum and Instruction; Higher Education
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/5607; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/6610/viewcontent/IS_Redesign_V10.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The pace at which technology redefines traditional job functions is picking up rapidly. This trend is triggered particularly by advances in analytics, security, cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence and big data. The purpose of this paper is to present a case study on our approach to renewing an undergraduate IS Major curriculum to align with the needs of the industry. We adopt a survey based approach to study Information Systems (IS) graduate skills requirements and re-design the curriculum framework for the IS program at our school. The paper describes in detail the process, the redesigned IS curriculum, the impact of the new curriculum on student enrolment across the different career tracks, and some lessons learned when trying to re-design the curriculum to align with industry needs. The work reported in this paper provides one pathway for Information Systems and Computer Science schools to re-engineer their curriculum design.