PREPARING STUDENTS FOR THE IS PROFESSION: DESIGNING AND ASSESSING A PROFESSIONAL READINESS PROGRAM

Numerous studies have highlighted the importance of relational and professional competencies for the information systems (IS) profession. Preparing IS students to be ready for their profession requires the development of competencies that are not often part of the standard disciplinary curriculum. Yet dedicating an entire course to professionalism can be a challenge due to resource and curriculum requirement constraints. In this paper, we describe a pilot project for a “Professional Readiness” program that was designed and implemented to provide an extracurricular resource for undergraduate students. We provide evidence of the program’s effectiveness, as well as lessons learned for developing and refining Professional Readiness programs for IS students

Chevron cutting: Experiment with new runway mixtures

Chevron cutting is shown to occur in different forms depending on the type of tire and the rubber on the running surface. Hardest wear is shown by the main tires of the B-747. Four defects occurred, in the form of two rip separation and two breakouts of the running surface. Tires capped by Thompson are more affected than any of the other rubber-capping fabrics. For Thompson tires, Chevron Cutting is greatly reduced with a fiberglass-rubber mixture. For Goodyear tires, it is eliminated with spiral wrap rubbercapping; resistance to damages through cuts seems to be more positive for Goodyear tires. For Mader tires, the extent of Chevron Cutting is generally smaller than for Thompson cappings

A Software Inspection Exercise for the Systems Analysis and Design Course

Software inspections have been found to be one of the most effective ways to promote quality and productivity in software development. Inspections are an especially important tactic to use during the analysis and design phases of software development since the correction of a defect found early in development can be 10 to 100 times less expensive to fix than rework performed at the system testing stage. Given its prominence within the software field, it is surprising that the software inspection process does not receive more attention with respect to education in the area of Systems Analysis and Design. The purpose of this article is to present an experiential exercise for the Systems Analysis and Design course that may be used to promote learning with respect to the software inspection process. The focal point of the exercise is a system specification document that describes the user requirements for a system for a fictional real estate company. The specification document includes three components that are typical of a specification document: a descriptive narrative overview, a project dictionary, and data flow diagrams (DFDs). Survey results regarding students\u27 perceptions of the exercise are also discussed

Using Wikis To Support Virtual Teams In Education: The Effect Of Instructor Leadership Style

This extended abstract describes the design of a study that was recently conducted to learn more about how to use one specific type of collaboration technology – wiki technology – to support virtual teams of students in an educational setting. The specific research question that was investigated was: For a wiki exercise, what is the impact of instructor online leadership style on student participation, performance and perceptions? Results from a study involving 58 virtual teams of students are discussed

Groupware Support for Software Inspections: The Impact of Group Interaction and Interface on Performance

The software inspection meeting is one of the best- known techniques for quality assurance in software development and has become a standard practice in many software development groups (Ebenau and Strauss, 1994). The application of groupware has been suggested as a particularly promising way to improve the inspection process (Johnson, 1998). This paper discusses a “research in progress” study that concerns the application of groupware to software inspection meetings. A controlled experimental study involving eighty teams is presently being conducted to address two fundamental research questions relating to the use of groupware to support software inspections: 1) Is it more effective to use groupware in an interactive or nominal group mode?; and 2) Is it worthwhile to incorporate task structure into the design of the groupware interface? The research design is a 2 X 2 factorial design using the inspection team as the unit of analysis. One independent variable manipulates the type of group interaction (nominal vs. interactive) and the second independent variable manipulates task structure (a partitioned groupware interface vs. an unpartitioned interface). The dependent variable will be team performance

Pricing and Trust

We experimentally examine the effects of flexible and fixed prices in markets for experience goods in which demand is driven by trust. With flexible prices, we observe low prices and high quality in competitive (oligopolistic) markets, and high prices coupled with low quality in non-competitive (monopolistic) markets. We then introduce a regulated intermediate price above the oligopoly price and below the monopoly price. The effect in monopolies is more or less in line with standard intuition. As price falls volume increases and so does quality, such that overall efficiency is raised by 50%. However, quite in contrast to standard intuition, we also observe an efficiency rise in response to regulation in oligopolies. Both, transaction volume and traded quality are, in fact, maximal in regulated oligopolies.markets; price competition; price regulation; reputation; trust; moral hazard; experience goods

Competition Fosters Trust

We study the effects of reputation and competition in a stylized market for experience goods. If interaction is anonymous, such markets perform poorly: sellers are not trustworthy, and buyers do not trust sellers. If sellers are identifiable and can, hence, build a reputation, efficiency quadruples but is still at only a third of the first best. Adding more information by granting buyers access to all sellers’ complete history has, somewhat surprisingly, no effect. On the other hand, we find that competition, coupled with some minimal information, eliminates the trust problem almost completely.experience goods; competition; reputation; trust; moral hazard; information conditions

Consumer Networks and Firm Reputation: A First Experimental Investigation

Arguing that consumers are the carriers of firms’ reputations, we examine the role of consumer networks for trust in markets that suffer from moral hazard. When consumers are embedded in a network, they can exchange information with their neighbours about their private experiences with different sellers. We find that such information exchange fosters firms' incentives for reputation building and, thus, enhances trust and efficiency in markets. This efficiency-enhancing effect is already achieved with a rather low level of network density.trust; consumer networks; moral hazard; information conditions; reputation

Energizing an Information Systems Program by Empowering Student Leaders

This paper describes an ongoing four-year project involving the development and implementation of a student-driven “IT Leadership” program to support an undergraduate academic program for Management Information Systems (MIS). The motivation for initiating the IT Leadership program was to enhance promotion of the MIS discipline and the career development of MIS students. The outcomes of implementation have been positive, including increased student interest in the MIS discipline, the creation of new professional development opportunities for students, and a rapid and significant increase in MIS graduates. The expenses associated with the program have been modest. Based on the findings of this project, it appears that empowering student leaders can be an effective way to support an MIS program

State or nature? Endogenous formal versus informal sanctions in the voluntary provision of public goods

We investigate the endogenous formation of sanctioning institutions supposed to improve efficiency in the voluntary provision of public goods. Our paper parallels Markussen et al. (Rev Econ Stud 81:301–324, 2014) in that our experimental subjects vote over formal versus informal sanctions, but it goes beyond that paper by endogenizing the formal sanction scheme. We find that self-determined formal sanctions schemes are popular and efficient when they carry no up-front cost, but as in Markussen et al. informal sanctions are more popular and efficient than formal sanctions when adopting the latter entails such a cost. Practice improves the performance of sanction schemes: they become more targeted and deterrent with learning. Voters’ characteristics, including their tendency to engage in perverse informal sanctioning, help to predict individual voting