Controlling Curriculum Redesign with a Process Improvement Model

1. INTRODUCTION An academic curriculum can be viewed as a process that transforms students (Grundy, 1987). The components of this process include courses, instructors, teaching materials and methods. In theory, when viewed from this perspective, various process improvement measures can be adopted to improve the quality of the transformation. However, in reality, the differences between students and between the components transforming them can be so significant that control over quality becomes difficult. As a result, the importance of having quality control procedures for curriculum development is no less important than that for other processes. The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) was developed by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University (Software Engineering Institute [SEI], 1995) as a tool for stage-based improvement of information system software development projects. It contains a framework for identifying five stages of maturity in the control of these projects. Moving from stage to stage in this framework corresponds to increasing control over the development process leading to increased quality of project outcomes. The focus of this paper is on the adoption and modification of CMM to the stage-based improvement of a curriculum design. The original impetus for adopting the CMM grew out of a problem recognized in one of the required courses in our curriculum. This course was centered on the design and development of practical information systems for community organizations (See Figures 1&2). Lack of quality and consistency in the projects indicated a need to revise the project development process. We first became interested in using the CMM for improving project quality. As we took steps to move through the levels of the CMM for student projects, we noticed that the benefits derived from it could extend beyond improving the projects themselves to also improving control over the evolving development of the curriculum. As a result, rather than focusing solely on the quality of the projects, we used the experiences and lessons learned to broaden the concepts and to adapt the general guidelines of the CMM for improving curriculum redesign. 1.1 Original Curriculum The Management Information Systems (MIS) curriculum in the College of Business at the authors' university was originally designed where each course was a self-contained, independent module requiring limited interaction between instructors. This design was originally based on the IS'97 Model Curriculum and Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Information Systems and followed the same guidelines in IS2002 Model Curriculum. These Model Curricula were the collaborative curriculum effort of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), AIS (Association for Information Systems) and AITP (Association of Information Technology Professionals) societies and is supported by other interested organizations. (IS'97, 1997) (IS2002, 2002). According to the published guidelines, the scope of Information Systems, as an academic field, encompasses two broad areas: (1) acquisition, deployment, and management of information technology resources and services (the information systems function) and (2) development and evolution of infrastructure and systems for use in organizational processes (system development). Our curriculum was built around five interrelated categories of courses: networks, database, programming, web development, and systems analysis/project management which covered both technology and technology-enabled business development categories of capabilities and knowledge expected for our graduates from the Model Curricula IS'97 and IS2002. In addition to these five categories of courses, the program also included three MIS courses required by all majors in the college, usually in the early stages of their studies and often before a major is declared. These courses are: a personal productivity applications course, Computer Concepts in Business, that covers computer concepts and MS Office suite software; Management Information Systems that involves an introduction to general MIS concepts, historical developments in IS, and emerging technology, etc. …