Dare To Be Relevant

Research relevance is an ongoing concern in the IS field. The perceived lack of relevance has its roots in institutional factors. I argue that the current environment offers a great opportunity to influence these institutional factors in the direction of greater incentives for relevant research. I recommend that: 1) Current candidates in the IS faculty market should include relevance as a factor in deciding which position to take, and 2) IS researchers should use the Internet to package and promote their research to develop a constituency outside their academic institutions

An IS Research Relevancy Manifesto

Many practitioners believe academic IS research is not relevant. I argue that our research, and the underlying rewards system that drives it, needs to respond to these concerns. We need to be more relevant to meet the increasing needs of our students, the organizations that hire them, and the larger society. To analyze the issues, I develop three different scenarios of where the IS field could be 10 years from now. The following visions of the future identify the implications of different levels of adaptation to relevance-related environmental pressures. Scenario 1: Minimal Adaptation. The IS field is shrinking, largely due to competition from newly established schools of information technology. The traditional paper-based journals continue to dominate. Their slow publication cycles, in contrast to the rapid rate of change in the IT industries, mean that most technical topics and many current managerial issues are excluded from the research that generates the greatest institutional rewards. However a market analysis indicates that we can still do relevant research in categories such as: 1) issues contrary to commercial interests; 2) unsolved problems; 3) issues economically unattractive to commercial researchers; 4) issues where management aspects are more important than technical aspects; and 5) research on teaching IS. Scenario 2: Moderate Adaptation. The IS field is approximately the same size, even though demand for graduates with IT skills is greater. The journals expand the subset of topics in which IS researchers can generate relevant contributions, by improving publishing cycle times. Adaptive responses include: 1) increasing electronic access to journal contents; 2) reducing review cycle times; 3) involving practitioners in reviews; and 4) revising norms for style and tone. Scenario 3: High Adaptation. The IS field is larger than before, growing in proportion to the demand for graduates with IT skills. Academia is facing tremendous pressures, many of which are driven or influenced by IT developments. These developments enable changes in the IS field such as: 1) including technical competence in evaluation criteria; 2) rewarding publishing in practitioner-oriented outlets; and 3) involving practitioners in substantive IS program issues. Scenario 1 is the do nothing alternative. Scenarios 2 and 3 represent substantial improvements, but they will not occur unless we act vigorously to improve our position

An Employment-Oriented Definition of the Information Systems Field: An Educator\u27s View

Defining information systems has been a longstanding problem for the field. This paper suggests that, since it may not be possible to develop a universal definition, consideration should be given to a plurality of definitions aligned toward specific purposes. As an implementation of this approach it recommends the following shorter definition for the purpose of education, which emphasizes topics that are being or will be taught to prepare students for employment in the field: Information systems is the field that prepares students to interface between non-technical organizational employees and managers and very technical IT professionals, with a focus on functions that are unlikely to be offshored. It includes general categories of information and communications technology use that currently and/or will employ substantial numbers of employees in organizations. The more detailed definition presented in the body of the paper extends this by identifying five broad subcategories that currently fit within the above definition

Reuse of Web-Based Teaching Materials in IS Courses

This paper describes the experiences of the author and other faculty members in a CIS department that encourages sharing of web-based teaching materials. This includes using materials developed by other faculty, and creating materials for others. These experiences indicate that such materials can increase productivity. Another benefit is that the materials make it easier to teach modules on topics in which the instructor has little or no previous experience. However the productivity gains are somewhat offset by the need to keep the materials up-todate, and to adapt them to individual teaching philosophies. One weak link in this process is the lack of procedures for managing the materials and incorporating feedback based on classroom experience, and on discovery of additional relevant content

Paying for Performance: The Education Impacts of a Community College Scholarship Program for Low-Income Adults

We evaluate the effect of performance-based incentive programs on educational outcomes for community college students from a random assignment experiment at three campuses. Incentive payments over two semesters were tied to meeting two conditions¿enrolling at least half time and maintaining a ¿C¿ or better grade point average. Eligibility increased the likelihood of enrolling in the second semester after random assignment and total number of credits earned. Over two years, program group students completed nearly 40 percent more credits. We find little evidence that program eligibility changed types of courses taken but some evidence of increased academic performance and effort

The 13th Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the SDSS-IV Survey Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) began observations in July 2014. It pursues three core programs: APOGEE-2,MaNGA, and eBOSS. In addition, eBOSS contains two major subprograms: TDSS and SPIDERS. This paper describes the first data release from SDSS-IV, Data Release 13 (DR13), which contains new data, reanalysis of existing data sets and, like all SDSS data releases, is inclusive of previously released data. DR13 makes publicly available 1390 spatially resolved integral field unit observations of nearby galaxies from MaNGA,the first data released from this survey. It includes new observations from eBOSS, completing SEQUELS. In addition to targeting galaxies and quasars, SEQUELS also targeted variability-selected objects from TDSS and X-ray selected objects from SPIDERS. DR13 includes new reductions ofthe SDSS-III BOSS data, improving the spectrophotometric calibration and redshift classification. DR13 releases new reductions of the APOGEE-1data from SDSS-III, with abundances of elements not previously included and improved stellar parameters for dwarf stars and cooler stars. For the SDSS imaging data, DR13 provides new, more robust and precise photometric calibrations. Several value-added catalogs are being released in tandem with DR13, in particular target catalogs relevant for eBOSS, TDSS, and SPIDERS, and an updated red-clump catalog for APOGEE.This paper describes the location and format of the data now publicly available, as well as providing references to the important technical papers that describe the targeting, observing, and data reduction. The SDSS website, http://www.sdss.org, provides links to the data, tutorials and examples of data access, and extensive documentation of the reduction and analysis procedures. DR13 is the first of a scheduled set that will contain new data and analyses from the planned ~6-year operations of SDSS-IV.PostprintPeer reviewe