Curriculum recommendations for undergraduate programs in information systems
Communications of the ACM
A systems analysis & design course sequence
SIGCSE '82 Proceedings of the thirteenth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
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Employers of students trained in computer science and data processing fall largely in three categories: manufacturers of computer equipment, software houses, and finally end users of the computers. Of these categories, most employment opportunities are in the third category, the end user. For each employer there is a range of positions from systems programmer to applications programmer to business systems analyst. Figure 1 shows the organization chart of a medium sized systems and data processing area in a company that manufactures consumer products. Of the sixty five positions which would require a degree in computer science or data processing, in at most seven (perhaps only two) of these positions would the traditional computer science graduate be preferred (if the employer had a choice). At the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater our program is aimed at the large number of positions where a business background is helpful. In addition to introductory programming we require three programming courses, two analysis and design courses, a course in hardware and software selection and a course including data base management. In addition, all students must have at least 15 hours of business courses including two accounting courses and a management course. Our graduates have the technical ability to be good programmers and/or systems analysts, and they have the business background so that they can talk to users in the users own language. In developing the major the faculty consulted outside business computing managers and the ACM Information Systems Curriculum1. Many of the courses in the major are very close to those specified in the ACM curriculum.