This paper provides an overview report of the first joint curriculum development effort for undergraduate programs in information systems. The curriculum recommendations am a collaborative effort of the following organizations: ACM, AIS, DPMA, and ICIS. After a summary of the objectives and rationale for the curriculum, the curriculum model is described. Input and output attributes of graduates are delineated. Resource requirements for effective IS programs are then identified. Lastly, there is a proposal for maintaining currency of the curriculum through electronic media.
This study compares a linear keyword language interface and a restricted natural language interface for data retrieval by a novice user. The comparison focuses on the effect of different data base interfaces on user performance (as measured by query correctness and query writing time) in a query writing task across varying query types and training levels. To accomplish this objective, a laboratory experiment was conducted using a split-plot factorial design using two between-subjects factors and one within-subjects factor. The results indicate that the restricted natural language subjects performed significantly better than the linear keyword language subjects in terms of both query correctness and query writing time.
Leading MIS executives and academicians have identified systems development as one of the most critical issues of the 1980s. Their concerns include providing user accessibility to stored information, reducing development cost and delay, increasing developer productivity, and increasing MIS's impact on organizational growth, productivity, and profitability. Among the number of proposed alternative approaches to traditional systems development, prototyping is mentioned frequently. Prototyping is routine in hardware development but not software. The authors review published references to prototyping and related concepts and synthesize a process model for information systems. In this model, resource requirements are enumerated and discussed. The article includes an analysis of the economics of prototyping, and a brief discussion of several examples. Prototyping for information systems development addresses today's critical issues; it will no doubt raise a new set of research questions for tomorrow.