The answer is that the organization system provides some information management resources for knowledge workers, but individual knowledge workers are expected to manage much of the information technology they use and to build and operate much of their own information management system. In other words, organizations have formal organization systems for information management, and individual knowledge workers have their own information management systems. The systems have strong interactions, but they are different. What is needed is a course for individuals who will be expected to develop and manage a large part of their information resources and information processing. Such individuals are described as knowledge workers because their work depends on knowledge they bring to the task, their ability to obtain information from a variety of sources, and their ability to design and carry out analytical and information processing activities.
Examples are analysts, managers, accountants, designers, programmers, and so forth.
The course meets an important need by dealing with a discontinuity in the sequence of courses for specialists. It provides an orderly transition between the survey introductory course and the specialized traditional courses. Although development in the small has many similarities to development in the large, many activities are eliminated or done much more simply. The primary objective of the new second course is to instruct students how to be more productive in their use of information technology. The course can be described in terms of three major areas of instruction.