The Balancing Act Of Developing An Undergraduate Mis Program

This paper reports on the developmental process of an undergraduate program for Management Information Systems at the School of Business of University of Nicosia which is a private University in Cyprus. The paper examines how, beyond the challenges widely documented in the literature, the team in charge of curriculum development had to balance out requests by a Visiting Team of academics appointed by ECPU -a national quality assurance body supervising private Universities- with the insights and guidelines of an Advisory Body composed of volunteering representatives of major business organizations in Cyprus, whilst keeping under consideration financial restrictions as well as constraints imposed by the regulatory framework of the University. The developed curriculum addresses these issues and provides flexibility for future growth in accordance with ever evolving challenges of this field

Deploying APIs in the Cloud: A Novel Approach to the MIS Infrastructure Course

Among the most in-demand technology jobs for 2020 include cloud architect and software developer. The typical IT infrastructure position will require programming knowledge, while the typical developer will require infrastructure knowledge. The creation and deployment of APIs is an ideal vehicle to teach both programming and cloud infrastructure in an integrated way. This paper describes the design and structure of a new undergraduate cloud infrastructure course that takes this integrated approach

NEW CHALLENGES FACING AGRICULTURAL AND RESOURCE ECONOMICS DEPARTMENTS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Land/grant colleges were established to serve the public via a tripartite system of teaching, research, and extension. Agricultural economists have played a key role in this system in meeting agriculture's needs and are expanding this role to better cover the areas of food, natural resources and the environment. The declining economic importance of agriculture and the growing interest in relegating agriculture to free market forces has resulted in declining formula funding for the land grant system, greater emphasis on competitive funding, demands for greater accountability, and demands for a return to greater focus on public service, problem solving, and stakeholder involvement in the definition of research, teaching, and outreach agenda. Simultaneously, the demand for the traditional "agricultural economics" graduate is declining. This paper reviews the current and long-term issues and trends facing agricultural economics departments, explores the futures of their teaching, research, and outreach programs, and highlights the challenges that will be faced as these departments explore new teaching, research, and service opportunities in the areas of food, natural resources, and the environment. The paper concludes by arguing that for forward thinking agricultural economics departments, these pending changes will represent opportunities for better scholarship, more balance, and more effective service.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

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Teaching and learning in virtual worlds: is it worth the effort?

Educators have been quick to spot the enormous potential afforded by virtual worlds for situated and authentic learning, practising tasks with potentially serious consequences in the real world and for bringing geographically dispersed faculty and students together in the same space (Gee, 2007; Johnson and Levine, 2008). Though this potential has largely been realised, it generally isn’t without cost in terms of lack of institutional buy-in, steep learning curves for all participants, and lack of a sound theoretical framework to support learning activities (Campbell, 2009; Cheal, 2007; Kluge & Riley, 2008). This symposium will explore the affordances and issues associated with teaching and learning in virtual worlds, all the time considering the question: is it worth the effort

Transforming pre-service teacher curriculum: observation through a TPACK lens

This paper will discuss an international online collaborative learning experience through the lens of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. The teacher knowledge required to effectively provide transformative learning experiences for 21st century learners in a digital world is complex, situated and changing. The discussion looks beyond the opportunity for knowledge development of content, pedagogy and technology as components of TPACK towards the interaction between those three components. Implications for practice are also discussed. In today’s technology infused classrooms it is within the realms of teacher educators, practising teaching and pre-service teachers explore and address effective practices using technology to enhance learning

Approaches to Incorporating IT Entrepreneurship into the Information Systems Curriculum

The success of tech company IPOs such as Facebook, Twitter, and Snap has not been lost on today’s Information Systems (IS) majors. The demand for entrepreneurship education has grown rapidly from a just a few college classes in entrepreneurship in the 1970s to the over 3,000 colleges and universities providing entrepreneurship curriculum today (Davidson, White, and Taylor, 2012; Morris, Kuratko, and Cornwall, 2013). Information Systems (IS) students interested in launching their own tech startup can benefit from the common body of knowledge found in general entrepreneurship coursework. However, such coursework generally does not take into account the specific characteristics of IT services and software. This translates into the need for a special set of entrepreneurial skills for developing and launching an IT startup. While there has been some research into software and IT entrepreneurship in the fields of software engineering and computer science, little curricular guidance exists for IS students wishing to launch their own tech startup. This paper explores current approaches to teaching the IT and software entrepreneurial skill set. Experience with a dedicated course in tech startup entrepreneurship is described. A sample syllabus for IS majors is provided. The paper concludes with lessons learned and suggestions for implementing an entrepreneurship component as part of an undergraduate IS program