Enhancing Student Learning across Disciplines: A Case Example using a Systems Analysis and Design Course for MIS and ACS Majors

Background Information Systems analysis and design is a course that focuses on the development and maintenance of new and existing systems in an enterprise (Misic & Russo, 1999). This course is usually taught in an MIS program in a business school or in a computer science program in the liberal arts or engineering school. The MIS curriculum includes a course in Systems Analysis and Design (SAD Gorgone, et al., 2003). The SA&D course focuses on the earlier phases of the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC), and the course is typically delivered using either or both the procedure-centric and object-oriented paradigms. In the Applied Computer Science (ACS) Curriculum, a two-part Software Engineering (SE) course is usually offered, which consists of analysis and design in the first semester and a system development project (a capstone course) in the second semester. The College of Business established the MIS program that is discussed in this study in 1999 following an extensive review by both the faculty and IS practitioners. As part of the development of the MIS program, a focus group comprising of MIS faculty and IS practitioners was conducted to review a proposed curriculum for MIS. The idea to leverage the expertise of the well established computer science program to support the newly developed MIS program was echoed by the IS practitioners during the focused group discussion (Ehie, 2002). This viewpoint was made known to the provost of the institution by a consultant hired to review the new MIS curriculum. Based on the review, a new joint faculty position was approved for the MIS and the Computer Science departments. One-quarter of the new position was devoted to the MIS program and the new faculty member would be resident in the computer science department. The joint appointment will allow two programming courses to be taught by the ACS faculty for the MIS program. The department heads from the ACS and MIS programs, upon consultation with their respective faculty members and students, decided to offer a cross-listed course in SA&D in which both MIS and ACS students will be combined in one class. Such an unusual collaboration between two competing departments offers both challenges and opportunities. The main challenges were to ensure that the course design, bearing in mind the respective prerequisites, meets the curricula requirements to prepare both majors adequately for their subsequent system development and implementation courses and to diffuse the possible cultural tension between the two differently focused majors (Business and IS) during the class sessions. The main opportunity lies in constructively using the diversity to simulate the real-world situation, where students with different academic background work together to achieve the common course objectives. The SA&D course under the MIS program is followed by a capstone project course called Systems Implementation and Practice, which essentially caters to the curriculum requirements specified for implementing databases and distributed applications. The Applied Computer Science majors specializing in information systems in the University have a core course titled Information Systems Analysis and Design (ISA&D) in addition to Software Engineering, a project-based capstone course required by all ACS majors. Just as in SA&D, primary workflows in software development form the core of ISA&D. A second-level Information System course emphasizing the use of databases serves as the prerequisite for the ISA&D course, along with an in-depth four-semester programming knowledge. The ACS department, with input from the MIS department, hired a new faculty member that had an extensive industry experience. …