Abstract
An individual certification (IC) may help to improve the grades and the employability of IS undergraduate students. On the other hand, IS educators are still facing the dilemma of adopting or not IC in their computing curricula. To deal with this challenge, in this research we described and tested the Student’s Professional Certification (SCert) process. SCert introduces certification exams into the IS teaching and learning environment as an optional activity for students. SCert is an artifact derived from DevOps-based learning. We embedded two kinds of free certification exams: Scrum and DevOps. We choose Design Research to verify the following research question: does student certification increase the student's grade? We collected historical data from 112 students from four different classes that occurred from 2019 to 2020. By adopting SCert, the main results were: i) students that achieved one certification only graded statistically better than non-certified students with a 5% ANOVA confidence level; ii) students that achieved two or three certification badges had better grades than those that achieved one certification only, although the grades were statistically better grades than non-certified students only. This research aims to contribute to the investigation of how to embed certifications into the IS higher education context; provide alternatives to the IS higher education teaching methods that may benefit students’ grades.
Recommended Citation
Grotta, Alexandre; Prado, Edmir Parada Vasques; and Sambinelli, Fernando, "Students’ Professional Certification (SCert) in IS Higher Education" (2022). ISLA 2022 Proceedings. 18.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/isla2022/18