Abstract

The field of Information systems continues to change dynamically with the painful impact for reacting to those changes felt by both undergraduate and masters’ level programs. The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a comparative selfstudy of one MSIS program as a measure to assess its competitiveness among a set of other comparable, competitive and aspirant masters’ programs. The focus of the study is determine the viability of one specific master’s curriculum used currently to prepare students for professional careers in information systems in order to meet the marketplace challenges created by the ever-evolving information systems business needs. The fundamental methodology used in this study is based on that which was employed in a previous study conducted to assess the ‘fit’ of 86 MSIS programs with the MSIS 2000 Model Curriculum (Vijayaraman, et.al.) Findings will be presented that reflect shared learning objectives, curriculum content, currency, and relevancy necessary to assess whether changes to the current curriculum are necessary to establish a more competitive position among the three categories of comparable, competitive and aspirant university MSIS programs. One benefit that resulted from this initiative is the recognition that there has been relatively little research directed at assessing the overall direction of current MSIS programs and the need to revisit the need for a new MSIS model curriculum. The last endorsed MSIS model curriculum was published in 2006 (Gorgone, et.al. 2006), almost 10 years ago. It is the hope of presenting the results of this study that a discussion can begin to address the challenge of maintaining a viable MSIS curriculum that meets the current and future demands of the business community

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