A Framework towards Assessing the Merits of Inviting IT Professionals to the Classroom

Abstract

Executive SummaryFor the past years, the academic IT profession through various professional society curriculum committees and accreditation bodies has made considerable progress to revise and update IT curricula to meet the changing needs of the profession. In particular, learning techniques, beyond classroom teaching activities, have been recognized as essential ingredients to enhance the learning outcomes of advanced-level IT courses. This study outlines an assessment framework to explore the merits of inviting IT professionals as a pedagogical technique to integrate real world IT experience into the classroom. Though the general merits of inviting guest speakers have been confirmed in many previous (non-IT related) studies, these events are particularly much needed in the IT field. This urgency is justified by many factors such as the complex and constantly changing IT profession and its environment, the rapid pace in the rollout/phase-out of IT technologies and terminologies, and the shallow focus on professional orientation in most IT curricula. Our study confirms some of the merits of inviting guest speakers as reported in the literature. It also adds to existing literature in at least three aspects. First, to our best knowledge, this is the first reported study that reflects upon the usage of guest speakers in IT classrooms. Second, our research is a first initiative that contributes to establishing a formal framework for the planning and the assessment of guest speaker events. Such an assessment framework will be very useful for continuous improvement to ensure that students will not feel cheated that three hours of classtime lecturing and discussions were devoted to a less worthwhile guest speaker talk. Third, compared to previous studies, the experience reported in this article is unique in the sense that it is formally and strategically planned, conducted on a large (university-wide) scale and scheduled during a particular week near the end of each semester. Based on the proposed assessment framework and research methodology, this research makes use of multiple sources of evidence to assess the merits of guest speaker events.The data collected indicate that the event helps remedy the lack of exposure of information technology students to the IT professional environment. The event can also provide students with invaluable real-world and practical IT knowledge. Such knowledge can either relate to a particular topic already covered by the course, or it can bring new practical perspectives which are not covered by the course syllabus. These perspectives, along with the guest speaker recommendations, can be fed-back into the IT courses to enrich their content and/or scope. Such feedback is more important than ever given the rapidly evolving nature of the IT environment. This study Material published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use ...

The Live Teaching Case: A New IS Method and its Application

“…In this method one or more IT professionals are invited to bring real world IT experience into the classroom. Several previous non IT-related studies have confirmed the merit of guest speaker events (Kamoun & Selim, 2007). First, this teaching technique builds linkages between academics and the industry (Clarke & Gibson-Sweet, 1998;Glenwick & Chabot, 1991;Gordon, 1999) and provides professional role models for students (Butler, 1997).…”

From the source: student-centred guest lecturing in a chemical crystallography class

“…A successful student-centred guest lecture requires plenty of advance preparation (Cloud & Sweeney, 1988;Kamoun & Selim, 2007). A carefully selected, well prepared guest provides depth and clarity; therefore, it is important to contact the potential guest lecturers at least two months ahead to begin planning.…”

Improving IS Student Enrollments: Understanding the Effects of IT Sophistication in Introductory IS Courses

“…Consequently, rather than affecting choice goals directly, the model proposes that IT sophistication will influence student choice behaviors through the personal factors specified in the model. Specific to interests, research suggests that students prefer to engage in learning activities that relate directly to contemporary industry practices (Kamoun & Selim, 2007). In this respect, being exposed to modern, state-of-the-art information technologies (i.e., sophisticated) that are similar to those utilized in organizations can trigger students' interest in the IS field.…”