Practising Information Systems Approach for Developing Information Technology Skills Used in Business

Abstract

The changing information technology (IT) skill requirements for business professionals in the new millennium have forced many universities to review their IT curriculum. The concept of a traditional approach to developing IT skills to meet the educational needs of all future business professionals is becoming obsolete, and other approaches are needed. This article describes the practice of Information Systems Approach (!SA) along with the Traditional Approach (TA) for developing IT skills in the College of Commerce and Economics of Sultan Qaboos University, the only national university in Oman. In order to study the effectiveness of the !SA, two groups were randomly selected; one followed the !SA, and the other group used the TA. The design was pretest-posttest, control group. The initial and final IT skills were compared. This study was repeated three times and was segmented into Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III in order to increase the validity and reliability of the results. (Keywords: information systems approach, IT skills, IT effectiveness, IT applications, traditional approach.) To develop the information technology (IT) skills used in business, a course should include the basic concepts of IT business applications, followed by the introduction of business software such as word processing, spreadsheet/graphics, and databases. There are three possible approaches based on the importance and order of presentation of these software modules. These are the Word Processing First Approach, Spreadsheet First Approach, and Database First Approach. These approaches are briefly described here.Word-Processing First Approach: This approach starts with word processing, followed by spreadsheets and graphics. Students will then usually be introduced to databases and database software (Freeman & Rowley, 1995). I call this approach the Traditional Approach (TA) because it is the one most commonly used. Spreadsheet First Approach (SFA):This approach starts with spreadsheets and graphics, followed often by word processing. Students will then usually be introduced to databases and database software (Freeman & Rowley, 1995). This approach is not commonly used in educational institutions because it alone is restricted to handling quantitative data.Database First Approach: Very few instructors consider database software to be an appropriate starting point for an IT course. This approach starts with databases, followed by spreadsheets and graphics and finally by word processing. This approach can be called an Information Systems Approach (ISA) (Freeman & Rowley, 1995). The essential characteristic of the ISA is that it focuses on the quantitative and qualitative information commonly used in business environ-

Students’ IT Confidence and Skills

“…This finding is also supported by the relationships diagram as shown in Figure 3 between IT conceptual understanding, IT usage, IT attitudes, IT confidence and IT competence (Naqvi 2000). Greater conceptual understanding motivates the students to use IT more and more use brings about more IT confidence and competence.…”

An Overview: Approaches for the Development of Basic IT Skills

“…The modules presented in the course support these activities. The ISA appears more in line with the business activities in modem organizations (Naqvi, 2002).…”