Computer Literacy Skills for Computer Information Systems Majors: A Case Study

Journal of Information Systems Education, Spring 2004 by McDonald, David S

Additionally, for individual courses offered in the Robinson College, none, one, two, or more of the CSP skills could be listed in the undergraduate and graduate catalogs along with other, more traditional, prerequisite requirements. As with any other prerequisite, individual departments within the college (as well as the university) determine which CSP prerequisites are required for individual courses. However, all students in the College are expected to meet the requirements of CSP 1,2,6, and 7. These combined basic computer skills are the minimum computer literacy requirements for the College.

Past policy has left it up to the students themselves to determine if they have these necessary skills. The university provided free remedial classes to students who felt they lacked any of the requirements. Formerly, these classes were available in a scheduled classroom setting. More recently, Internet-based online remedial tutorials have replaced classroom instruction.

3.1 Prior Enforcement Policy

Although the basic computer-skills policy has been listed in the graduate and undergraduate catalogs for many years, the University has never had a mechanism by which to enforce these prerequisites. There are a number of reasons why the University has recently decided to enforce these prerequisites. First, the mainframe-based registration system in-place for the past decade would have required a major revision to include these new prerequisites. However, the University is currently switching over to a state-of-the-art registration system. With this new registration system, enforcement of these prerequisites will be a simple procedure. Second, in 1999, University policy changed making it mandatory for all students to have access to their own personal computers. Third, over the years, as technology became more integrated into many of the College of Business courses, faculty complained that valuable classroom time was being spent providing students with remedial software knowledge. This was especially true of the Computer Skills Prerequisites.

4. REQUIREMENTS FOR A PROPOSED SOLUTION

Because of these factors, the College Graduate and Undergraduate Program Committees reviewed the CSP policy and decided it was time to investigate mechanisms to test students for basic computer-literacy skills. In the spring of 2000, these program committees appointed an ad hoc committee for the purpose of investigating different testing and enforcement mechanisms for those objectives listed in table 2. It should be noted that the CSP requirements in Table 2 may not be changed or expanded. They are the officially sanctioned definitions as shown in the College's catalog. These CSPs were developed and mandated by the College's Executive Committee.

The ad hoc committee consisted of faculty from a number of departments within the College. This committee produced the following recommendations:

* First, testing should be done online, using Internet-based testing software as opposed to traditional paper-based testing. Moreover, this Internet-based testing must utilize a relational database to store the results of the students' exams since the new registration system has a relational database for storing students' registration information. Thus, as part of the RFP, a software supplier was sought that would be willing to develop a software utility to merge the results of the CSP tests with the new registration system. The registration system could be used to enforce CSP prerequisite fields in the same manner as with other prerequisites.