Teachinginformation systems policy: electronic sophism?

This paper describes the delivery of a third year undergraduate Information Systems Policy subject in which use was made of ‘debate’ as a way of exploring underlying value systems in policy development. The students developed the peer marking scheme for the debate sessions through the use of a facilitated electronic meeting. INFORMATION SYSTEMS POLICY The main aim of this third year undergraduate subject is to introduce students to issues relating to the development of policy in the area of IS and IT with particular emphasis on the idea of people as policy makers. The broad approach adopted was interpretivist in nature with the aim of exploring the ways in which policies are made rather than working though existing examples of specific policies. Some aspects of IS/IT policy making can be seen as being essentially technical in nature, for example policies related to procurement or those relating to the backing up of systems. There is, of course, a human element in these areas, for example in the choice of procurement model or allocation of responsibility for backing up, but there are broad guidelines that can be used by policy makers in these areas. When one examines policy areas such as internet access, e-mail management and the marketing of database information the guidelines either do not appear to exist or are open to wide interpretation. The line of argument taken in this subject was that individual, organisational and cultural characteristics are likely to be strong sources of influence on policy development and that an appreciation of these areas is therefore important in order that some explanation of the differences in policy between organisations can be developed. TEACHING/LEARNING APPROACH This is a third year subject and one of my main aims is to encourage students to think, explore and challenge rather than absorb my views of the world and then simply recite them. The subject of information systems, being a derivative subject, draws upon many disciplines including computer science, business, philosophy, sociology and psychology and it is this richness that needs to be conveyed to students. However, richness brings with it complexity and the need for broad reading, analysis and critical thinking. Sadly, some students seem to find that an approach that does not work from a single set book, and that challenges conventional views and encourages thinking rather than memorising to be somewhat daunting. I would argue that in the information systems domain learning to think is more important than learning ‘facts’, but I also recognise that critical thinking is not an easy skill to develop. As Dewey comments: “If the suggestion that occurs is at once accepted, we have uncritical thinking, the minimum of reflection. To turn the thing over in the mind, to reflect, means to hunt for additional evidence, for new data, that will develop the suggestion, and will either, as we say, bear it out or else make obvious its absurdity and irrelevance. The easiest way is to accept any suggestion that seems plausible and thereby bring to an end the condition of mental uneasiness. Reflective thinking is always more or less troublesome because it involves overcoming the inertia that inclines one to accept suggestions at their face value; it involves willingness to endure a condition of mental unrest. Reflective thinking, in short, means judgment suspended during further inquiry; and suspense is likely to be somewhat painful” The other influences that guide the delivery of the subject include ideas in the Cooperative/Collaborative Learning (CCL) literature, which typically notes the following key points as identifiers of CCL: • Students work and learn together in small (2-5 member) groups. • Their task is carefully designed to be suitable for groupwork. • There is positive interdependence cooperation is necessary for students to succeed. • Students are individually accountable for learning and participation. • Attention and class time is given to interpersonal/cooperative skill building. • The role of the teacher changes from being the “sage on the stage” to “the guide on the side. ” Collaborative learning literature also suggests that the student who learns best is the one who organises, summarises, elaborates, explains and defends. It is suggested that the person who does the intellectual work, especially the conceptual work, learns the most and that students learn more when they are doing things they enjoy and that more learning occurs in an environment of peer support and encouragement because students work harder and longer. Given that Information Systems Policy is a third year subject it was assumed that the interpersonal/cooperative skill building areas had already been addressed prior to this subject. In fact this assumption is probably not true and should the subject be operated in this format again time would be devoted to these areas. The starting point for this subject was to consider the way in which different people view the world and express their value systems through language. This was framed within the interpretivist views of information systems. The scene was set with me declaring my roles as teacher for areas I felt reasonably confident I could defend, facilitator for learning development and learner when they discovered views I had not previously met. I also drew on Ann Kerwins’ ideas of the exploration of ignorance that she presented in a seminar she conducted in New Zealand. Kerwin comments that “Thus, even as we debate the nature and extent of human knowledge, we see that the domain of non-knowledge ignorance contains all of the things we know we don’t know; all the things we don’t know we don’t know; and all the things we think we know but don’t. ” In the opening lecture the views of various philosophers such as Plato, Socrates, Descartes etc were presented and the Sophist This paper appears in Challenges of Information Technology Management in the 21st Century, the proceedings of the Information Resources Management Association International Conference. Copyright © 2000, Idea Group Inc. 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