Integrating IS Curriculum Knowledge through a Cluster-Computing Project: A Successful Experiment

Introduction Business students majoring in areas such as MIS, IS, and IT in business colleges are arriving at college with ever-increasing technical proficiencies. Many businesses, as a result of changing needs, have begun to appreciate the value in employees who have a combination of business and technological skills. Businesses finally realize that hiring individuals, who possess strong technology skills and come from business programs, is not only desirable but reduce their up front training costs. "Value-added" is a popular term in businesses. How do the MIS courses add value to the ability and knowledge of the MIS graduates? Many programs are devoted to explaining the concepts of building networks and managing IT infrastructures through case analysis. Broad-based lecture-oriented case-supported education cannot prepare students to handle the tasks and responsibilities that they will be expected to take-on (Wrege, 1982). Of course, it prepares students to understand and simulate various business situations in which they may have to work (Korwin & Jones, 1990). However, organizations demand that MIS graduates coming out of business schools not only have the ability to understand and analyze different business situations, but also are proficient in handling and managing technology tools and environments. Organizations spend millions of dollars to train the MIS graduates and to customize to their role and responsibilities. Practitioners frequently claim that MIS curriculums do not prepare students to handle the roles and responsibilities that graduates have to take-on in organizations. As a result, companies have to bear the high cost of training them. Graduates entering the job market today will find employers seeking recruits well versed in theory, but also with networking experiences in a hands-on environment. Many institutions are trying to adjust their course offerings to address this situation (Harvey, Sirna, & Houlihan, 1998; Lane, 1981). From an educational perspective, teaching cluster computing is an ideal way to expose students to theoretical concepts as a foundation to the learning experience, and then providing them with the opportunity to apply what they have learned in a hands-on environment (Boud, 1995; Scanlon, Tounglu, & Jones, 1998). Often, MIS courses are taught from a theoretical point of view with little emphasis on actually using equipment. The use of cluster computing in business requires administrators and analysts with knowledge, skills, and experience in networking to effectively build and operate a system. As cluster computing migrates to an increasing number of business applications, personnel with a unique knowledge of both the technical aspects of cluster computing and the business acumen will become necessary. Thus, there is an increasing need to teach cluster computing in colleges of business (Hyde, 2000). The information curriculum being taught in colleges of business--by whatever name, MIS, IS, IT, etc.--should take a close look at cluster-computers. Such a course could help to provide cluster-administrators to the corporate world, and prepare future employees for the tasks ahead of them (Rice, Wilson, & Bagley, 2001). Cluster Computing Cluster computers are increasingly important elements in mainstream computing. In recent years, cluster computers have emerged as the leaders in high-performance computing (Sterling, 2000). Today's cluster-computers are more than a match for mainframes in terms of both cost and performance (Baker, Fox, & Yau, 1996). Cluster computing harnesses the combined computing power of multiple microprocessors in a parallel configuration. Cluster computers are a set of commodity PC's dedicated to a network designed to capture their cumulative processing power for running parallel-processing applications. Clustered computers are specifically designed to take large programs and sets of data and subdivide them into component parts, thereby allowing the individual nodes of the cluster to process their own individual "chunks" of the program (Baker, Apon, Buyya, & Jin, 2002; Baker & Buyya, 1999). …