AMCIS 2017 Panels Summary Report

The 23rd Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS’17) included nine panels over three days. In this report, we overview each panel and provide the contact information of each panel’s moderator so that readers can reach out to obtain additional information. The panels addressed a range of ongoing and emerging concerns of our discipline: one panel addressed IT security auditing, two addressed pedagogy, three addressed digital infrastructure, and another three addressed academic programs in analytics and information systems. We also discuss logistics of organizing panels, which individuals who organize future panels at AIS-affiliated conferences should find helpful

In or Out? Perceptions of Inclusion and Exclusion Among AIS Members

People want a sense of community, a benefit that a professional association such as the Association for Information Systems (AIS) can provide to members. When attempts to create a shared experience fall short and we feel excluded, we disengage and stop further attempts to participate. In this paper, we lay a foundation for individual and association inclusion practices in the AIS. First, we describe the current state of inclusion practices in the academy and in the AIS. Then, we describe findings from a survey of AIS members that measured their perceptions about inclusion and exclusion and factors that cultivated these perceptions. In doing so, we establish a baseline against which we can measure future change. Our data yields key insights about diversity and inclusion in the AIS, and we offer recommendations for all individuals in various roles and positions in the AIS

AIS Teaching Curation Project: The Introductory Course in Information Systems

The Association for Information Systems (AIS) Teaching Curation Project aims to highlight and summarize research within the association that focuses on the major courses taught in Information Systems (IS) programs. The present literature review is a companion to a curation website specific to the introductory course in IS. In this review, we identify three major themes that pervade this literature: IS program enrollment, pedagogy, and curriculum. We use these themes to structure our summary of the research on the importance of the introductory course and various approaches to instruction. These themes also provide a framework for positioning future research. For instructors of the introductory course, this review and the companion website hosted by the AIS serve as a reference for recommendations and inspiration

Blockchain Regulations and Decentralized Applications: Panel Report from AMCIS 2018

Blockchain represents one of the 21st century’s most impactful inventions. In addition to creating cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, this technology enables smart contract functionality and supports decentralized, secure, and private transactions. By design, blockchains enable decentralized functionality for many of today’s business applications and transform traditional centralized information systems. In this paper, we summarize four research areas that will appeal to IS scholars that a panel at AMCIS 2018 discussed: 1) cryptocurrency regulation, 2) Etherisc (a smart contract-based application), 3) decentralized blockchain applications in healthcare, and 4) Bitcoin as a blockchain application and issues with decentralization. To account for the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation’s requirements to provide people with the right to be forgotten and modify personal data, we modified Pedersen et al.’s (2019) framework to accommodate off-chain data storage requirements. We deployed Pedersen et al.’s (2019) modified framework to evaluate whether one can use blockchains for three different applications. We summarize several research questions and present a research agenda that emerged from the issues highlighted during the panel discussion

AIS Teaching Curation Project: The Introductory Course in Information Systems

The Association for Information Systems (AIS) Teaching Curation Project aims to highlight and summarize research within the association that focuses on the major courses taught in Information Systems (IS) programs. The present literature review is a companion to a curation website specific to the introductory course in IS. In this review, we identify three major themes that pervade this literature: IS program enrollment, pedagogy, and curriculum. We use these themes to structure our summary of the research on the importance of the introductory course and various approaches to instruction. These themes also provide a framework for positioning future research. For instructors of the introductory course, this review and the companion website hosted by the AIS serve as a reference for recommendations and inspiration

DevOps Didactic Transposition in IS Higher Education: A Systematic Literature Review

Information System (IS) higher education is often challenged by declining students’ academic performance and motivation. An alternative might be project-based learning (PjBL), due to its benefits for students, such as increased motivation. However, PjBL often focuses on the development phases and therefore lacks an operational vision. Against this drawback, DevOps might be seen as an advance of PjBL, arguing for a balance between the development and operational phases. Therefore, in this paper, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to answer this question: What are the students’ results when DevOps is applied to the IS teaching context? We collected 339 papers and selected 22 post-filtering. The two SLR main results were: i) DevOps emerged recently in IS education; ii) DevOps is highly related to PjBL; iii) DevOps benefited students’ carrier development, scaffolds students’ grades, and communication. The main contributions of this research are: to describe the state-of-art of DevOps in IS education; to provide a theoretical foundation for IS didactic transposition from IS Industry; to detail the students’ results when utilizing DevOps is applied to the IS teaching context

Competency-Based Approach to Information Systems Program Development: Guidance from the MSIS 2016 Global Competence Model

The panel has three objectives: First, it will present multiple perspectives on competency-driven approaches to developing and evaluating degree programs in Information Systems and compare the competency-driven approach to earlier, teaching topic or body of knowledge –driven approaches. Second, it will introduce the (nearly) completed version of the MSIS 2016 global competency model to the members of the global IS community and celebrate IS community’s efforts to improve the quality of graduate education. Third, the panel will discuss the essential role the competency-driven approach has as a foundation of MSIS 2016

Stuck in the Middle: Reflections from the AMCIS Mid-career Workshop

Studies often show that mid-career faculty are some of the unhappiest people in academia. Many mid-career faculty have tenure, have more freedom to pursue different types of projects, and have many options ahead. Yet, mid-career faculty members also deal with the personal politics that arise during the tenure process, with figuring out what to do with the newfound freedom, and with finding their own way among the many options in an academic career path. As a junior faculty member, one often has a singular goal: obtaining tenure. However, mid-career faculty members need to concern themselves with not only becoming a “full” professor but also figuring out what to do once they have reached that milestone and feeling full in their overall career path. In this paper, we discuss the challenges associated with being a mid-career faculty member based on research and insights discussed in the mid-career workshop offered at the Americas Conference on Information Systems. We offer examples of how to support mid-career faculty through workshops and mentoring relationships. We also provide insights on how individuals at different career stages can support and understand the challenges among mid-career faculty in information systems

Leveraging Market Research Techniques in IS – A Review of Conjoint Analysis in IS Research

With the increasing importance of mass-market information systems (IS), understanding individual user preferences for IS design and adoption is essential. However, this has been a challenging task due to the complexity of balancing functional, non-functional, and economic requirements. Conjoint analysis (CA), a marketing research technique, estimates user preferences by measuring tradeoffs between products attributes. Although the number of studies applying CA in IS has increased in the past years, we still lack fundamental discussion on its use in our discipline. We review the existing CA studies in IS with regard to the application areas and methodological choices along the CA procedure. Based on this review, we develop a reference framework for application areas in IS that serves as foundation for future studies. We argue that CA can be leveraged in requirements management, business model design, and systems evaluation. As future research opportunities, we see domain-specific adaptations e.g., user preference models