So, Where are You from Originally? Using Ineffective and Inappropriate Questions in MIS Tenure-Track Job Interviews

This paper presents the results of a study examining the procedures used by information systems departments when recruiting for tenure track faculty. An overview of the relevant legal environment is presented, along with a review of the current recruiting procedures used by the IS discipline. The results of the study indicate that professors use ineffective and inappropriate interviewing techniques during job interviews, including inappropriate inquiries into a candidate\u27s children, family, age, and country of origin

PAM: Cooking up a Model that Encourages Faculty to Stick to Active Learning Pedagogies

This study proposes PAM—a model that tests the specific factors that predict faculty\u27s intention to adopt active learning pedagogies. The study adapts the technology acceptance model (TAM) to better understand the factors that might affect a faculty member’s intention to adoption new technology. The results largely support the model. For external factors, the percentage of time lecturing was significantly related to perceived ease of adoption and social influence. Instructor perceptions of the usefulness of the pedagogy significantly predicted instructor’s pedagogical attitude. Finally, pedagogical attitude significantly predicted the instructor’s intention to adopt a pedagogy. These results suggest that a TAM-based model is useful for understanding faculty adoption behaviors

The Effects of Trustworthiness Perceptions on the Formation of Initial Trust: Implications for MIS Student Teams

Teamwork is a growing part of management education. One aspect of ensuring a successful team experience as part of the educational process involves the formation of trust between teammates. We present the results of an experiment that examines how students form initial trust under two general conditions - when selecting teammates to complete class assignments (task context) and when selecting teammates to forge new relationships (relationship context). The findings indicate that the factors that result in trust are weighted differently, depending on the purpose of the teams. Teams that are focused on completion of a task weighed prospective team members\u27 ability the most, while teams that were focused on forming friendships focused on the prospective team members\u27 integrity. We present specific recommendations and an exercise that MIS instructors can use to encourage trust formation in their teams

BEYOND THE FIVE-MINUTE UNIVERSITY: IMPROVING LEARNING IN OUR MIS CLASSES

In a classic Saturday Night Live skit in the seventies, Don Novello, in character as Father Guido Sarducci, skewered higher education by proposing to open the Five Minute University. The institution would teach basic statements which students would parrot back, in effect achieving what they would have retained five years after graduation. The skit was a huge success for Novello, because it characterized the state of learning in higher education at that time. Over thirty years later, we seek to understand what is necessary for MIS students to truly learn and find that the discipline’s conceptualization of learning remains largely consistent with the practices mocked in the skit. Although academia’s main mission is to educate students, many faculty continue to rely on pedagogies that focus on memorization, and on assessments that focus on students parroting back answers. This essay explores the components of learning as outlined in Ambrose et al. 2010, applies them to MIS, and makes recommendations to the discipline for improving student learning

The GET Immersion Experience: A New Model for Leveraging the Synergies between Industry and Academia

This article describes a new and innovative open co-op program for MIS/IS students. The program, Global Enterprise Technology Immersion Experience (GET IE), has a global enterprise focus that is integrated with hands-on experiential work-based learning to provide a context in which students are stimulated to utilize their classroom knowledge. The program includes a two-semester internship component that can be seamlessly incorporated with an existing MIS curriculum. The internship\u27s unique pedagogical innovation is to deliver academic coursework on global enterprise technology to the students just in time—that is, while they are participating in an extended internship. The program, in effect, creates a domain-specific, next generation co-op program that complements traditional information systems curricula with a skillset that is required for creating and running very large global enterprise applications. The guiding GET consortium consists of four universities and a number of large companies, and the consortium is open to future expansion. The continued growth of the consortium would enrich student choices and foster cross-fertilization of curriculum activities

Using Latent Growth Modeling to Understand Longitudinal Effects in MIS Theory: A Primer

The use of structural equation modeling (SEM) has grown dramatically in the field of management information systems (MIS) in the past twenty years, but SEM’s focus has been primarily on cross-sectional data sets. Functionally, SEM has been used to test measurement and path models, but the SEM approach has not been applied to repeated measures designs. In this article, we describe latent growth models (LGMs), an extension of SEM, which focuses on how observed and/or latent variables change over time. The purpose of this paper is to provide a primer on the use of LGMs, as well as to advocate for its use to extend MIS theory. We illustrate several flexible applications of LGMs using longitudinal data, including conditional, unconditional, and dual growth models. We discuss the advantages of using LGMs over other more traditional longitudinal approaches, and highlight areas in MIS where researchers can use this technique effectively

The Slippery Slope of MIS Academia: A Discussion of the Quest for Relevance in Our Discipline

The MIS discipline faces the need to periodically re-establish its relevance to both academics and practitioners. Evolving technology forces our discipline to change at a rate far exceeding that of other business disciplines. In the workplace, rapidly evolving IT management issues and technologies have led corporations to manage technical employees differently than other employees. In academia, however, MIS faculty are faced with the same expectations as other business faculty. The current model of MIS as an academic discipline has many issues that make staying current and relevant very difficult. The result is that MIS research and teaching lag practice. One might argue that as the field matures, we are falling further behind. This paper is the outcome of a panel discussion held during the 2006 Americas Conference on Information Systems in Acapulco, Mexico. The panel discussed the assertions that MIS is on a Slippery Slope that threatens our existence as a business discipline and that our current model encourages irrelevance, both in research and in teaching. Panel members were asked to share their views on five questions relative to the Slippery Slope from their unique perspectives

Prostate carcinoma metastatic to the skin as an extrammamary Paget's disease

Aim: The current paper describes a case of prostatic adenocarcinoma metastatic to the skin presenting as an extrammamary Paget's disease, a very rare and poorly characterised morphological entity. We report a case of prostatic carcinoma metastatic to skin showing a pattern of extramammary Paget's disease which has not been clearly illustrated in the literature Case presentation: A 63 year-old man with prostatic adenocarcinoma developed cutaneous metastases after 16 years. The inguinal metastases were sessile and 'keratotic.' The tumour displayed solid, glandular areas as well as a polypoid region suggestive of extramammary Paget's disease were identified.Discussion and conclusions: We review the diagnostic criteria that have led to the correct histopathological diagnosis in this case. A differential diagnosis of the pagetoid spread in the skin and various forms of cutaneous metastases determined by a prostatic adenocarcinoma as well as the role of immunohistochemistry in establishing the prostatic origin are presented in the context of this case. Although, morphologically the cells presented in the skin deposits were not characteristic for adenocarcinoma of prostate, immunohistochemistry for PSA and PSAP suggested a prostatic origin.Virtual Slides: The virtual slide(s) for this article can be found here: http://www.diagnosticpathology.diagnomx.eu/vs/1395450057455276. © 2012 Petcu et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

The Stresses and Politics of Project Management: A Systems Analysis and Design Simulation

This paper describes a systems analysis and design project that simulates the difficulties of project management within an information systems environment. This website construction project is typically implemented within the business core’s management information systems class, although it could also be used within the IS major’s information systems analysis and design course. The project requires the teams to play roles both as developers and as managers and uses an innovative circular class structure to simulate three levels of management. In addition to the project implementation, an unusual project grading schema is described, which alleviates many perceived grading inequalities that plague group projects. Students’ class comments are also examined to determine the final effectiveness of the project in communicating the difficulties of management politics and stress

Teaching Evaluation: Acknowledging the New Realities in the Modern Business School Classroom

New pressures are requiring business schools to re-emphasize teaching, and design performance evaluation systems that will give faculty an opportunity to improve their teaching performance, and supervisors the ability to reward them accordingly. Within a framework of multi-rater performance evaluation, seven constructs are identified as major dimensions of classroom activity, and are then used to predict student perceived performance (SPP). Results confirm that class organization and relationship with students have a large impact on SPP, but newer constructs encompassing the effective use of media and active learning techniques are also important in explaining student perceived performance