Best Practices for Increasing IS Enrollment: A Program Perspective

Abstract

This article shares best practices for increasing IS (information systems) enrollment based on the experiences of five people who have led their department's enrollment efforts over the past 3.5 years. Prior to launching these enrollment initiatives, each university's IS enrollment had reached record-breaking lows, mirroring enrollments nationwide. At the writing of this article, each university has both increased its IS enrollment and improved its program quality. These journeys have resulted in five best practices: make IS enrollment a long-term priority, partner with external stakeholders (i.e., employers, students, and other programs), incentivize students, maintain curriculum rigor, and add value. This article will help IS programs surmount the current challenges and attract, retain, and place IS majors.

The Credibility Crisis in IS: A Global Stakeholder Perspective

“…Panel session attendees ranked students as the second most important stakeholder. Consistent with this result, IS scholars [Firth et al, 2008;Koch, Van Slyke, Watson, Wells, and Wilson, 2010b] have long recognized students' critical role in sustaining IS programs. The IS field's research efforts have put forth proven strategies for increasing the number of students majoring in IS, such as assigning the most effective teachers to the introductory course [Looney and Akbulut, 2007].…”

Going Mobile: Teaching First-Year Business Students Mobile Application Design

“…IS programs can maintain a flexible curriculum that emphasizes rigor by requiring courses that cut across different career paths. Many employers desire students with strong technical skills, and the "IS lite" approach offers relevant material that better addresses this need (Koch et al, 2010). Gaskin and Berente (2011) used video game design in an MBA class to teach complex concepts to business students.…”

Why IS after All? An Explorative Analysis of Professionals' Letters of Study Motivation

“…Tremendous efforts have been done to draw attention to IS related topics even on high school level as an early intervention strategy [12]. Especially interventions to attract undergraduates to the IS discipline, for example by introductory IS courses [13] or by modification of the curriculum [14], are matter of current discussion and research. Beside these approaches the question whether the pipeline of IS students can also be filled at another point than the beginning arises.…”