E-Commerce and the Undergraduate MIS Curricula: an Exploratory Study

Journal of Information Systems Education, Summer 2006 by Moshkovich, Helen M, Mechitov, Alexander I, Olson, David L

ABSTRACT

Undergraduate MIS curricula should reflect the popularity of e-commerce technologies in business practices. The study analyzes current trends of incorporating e-commerce content and skills into the undergraduate MIS curricula of AACSB accredited business schools. A definite trend to incorporate e-commerce knowledge and skills into the elective component of undergraduate MIS programs was found. Problems identified and possible solutions are discussed.

Keywords: E-Commerce, E-Business, Information Systems Curriculum, Undergraduate MIS Curriculum, Client-Side Web Development, Server-Side Web Development

1. INTRODUCTION

Information Technology involves constant and rapid change. IT professionals have to cope with change and be prepared to constantly revise and update their knowledge and skills. IT/IS college education should reflect this dynamic environment and should be able to provide tools that respond to the challenges of the 21st century in a timely manner. While new knowledge and skills need to be incorporated into the existing curricula, the college education system contains factors complicating curricular updating.

The establishment of e-commerce/e-business as a way of doing business raised the question of how corresponding knowledge and skills could be incorporated into the current MIS curricula of business schools. The early approach was to create an e-commerce program as a major. The rapid growth of those programs at the Master's level during the period of 1999-2001 was identified in several publications (Durlabhji & Fusilier, 2002; Mechitov et al., 2002; Fusilier & Durlabhji, 2003; Moshkovich et al, 2005). This was followed by a number of analogous programs at the bachelor's level beginning in 2001 (White, 2001, Fusilier & Durlabhji, 2003).

After the dotcom crisis, the process of establishing e-commerce programs had essentially stopped. At that time, an opinion emerged that it was necessary to equip all MIS students with the ability to work within the environments of e-commerce and the Internet (Lomerson & Schwager, 2002; Lim, 2002). The latest data on the required skills for entry level IS positions (Koong et al., 2002; Liu et. al., 2003; Lomerson et al., 2004-5) state that the category "Web development" has been added to the traditional categories usually associated with the IS area (such as "programming skills", "database management", etc.).

The necessity to introduce the concepts and technologies of e-commerce in the MIS curricula is at variance with some aspects of the established structure of undergraduate MIS programs:

* AACSB accreditation establishes certain requirements for the business core,

* The majority of universities also establish standards for the general education component for all majors,

* There are usually limits on the overall number of hours required by the institution to graduate with a bachelor degree in business.

This results in a limited number of courses, specific to the major area within AACSB accredited programs. The goal of this paper is to investigate to what extent undergraduate MIS curricula incorporates e-commerce content, how the level of e-commerce content is connected with the number of courses in the MIS major, whether or not the coverage corresponds to current market requirements, and possible ways to resolve issues arising from limitations on the number of courses in the MIS major.

The next section will review the primary directions in MIS curricular design, the main requirements for e-commerce skills in the market place, and formulate our research questions. In the third section we will present our research methodology and results. Discussion will be followed by recommendations for future research.

2. PROBLEM STATEMENT

The right balance between fundamental knowledge of the IS field and technical skills necessary to obtain an entry level job in the market place is one of the major challenges of the undergraduate curricular design for an MIS major in AACSB accredited business schools (Lightfoot, 1999). Weber (2004 p. viii) referred to the first component as the "...core of the IS/IT discipline" and the second component as ".. .vocational in nature".

The first component of IS education deals mostly with concepts, theories, and principles which form the basis of the information systems' world. Its content should be much more stable than actual technologies applied for special tasks in the field of information systems. College education traditionally focuses more on this type of knowledge.

On the other hand, undergraduate MIS education should provide students with knowledge and skills in current technologies. These technologies help the learning of concepts (by applying them) and prepare students for the IT market (Weber, 2004). This is the ever changing part of the MIS curricula.

Although the MIS area does not have its own accreditation system, the IS Model Curriculum (Gorgone et al., 2002) summarizes content required for MIS education. While not all business schools are committed to this model (Daigle et al., 2003), it could be an appropriate starting point in assessing the body of fundamental knowledge to be covered within the MIS major.