Application for Academic Year 2005-2006
Center for Writing Excellence Department Development Grant
Writing Across the MIS Curriculum
MIS Area within the Dept. of Decision Sciences and MIS
Overview
A key component of success for management information systems (MIS) graduates in the
business world is good communication skills, especially writing skills. The MIS area
would like to ensure that all students going through its programs have strong writing
skills. Thus MIS plans to ensure this by initially focusing on the courses within its
thematic sequences.
During spring of 2005, the faculty in the area have met and established some broad
objectives for student writing in the MIS area. These are:
1. Write technical content to a non-technical audience.
2. Write for varying business contexts (writing formats/audiences).
3. Write about MIS topics using MIS specific terminologies.
4. Technical writing in a project setting (example: Requirements Definition, Project
Plan).
Our current goal in this proposal is to focus on these objectives for the liberal education
and thematic sequence courses within the MIS area. The MIS area has recently approved
two new thematic sequences in 2004, i) Applications Integration with Enterprise Systems
(MIS 235, 302, and 303) and ii) Web Mining and Knowledge Management (MIS 235,
302, 404). These sequences have two common courses (MIS 235, MIS 302). Since these
are also liberal education thematic courses, we would like to ensure that writing is a key
component in establishing the liberal education requirements of thinking critically,
reflection and informed action.
John Bean argues that writing is a key way to develop critical thinking abilities and
problem solving skills and notes that “integrating writing and other critical thinking
activities into a course increases students’ learning while teaching them thinking skills for
posing questions, proposing hypotheses, gathering and analyzing data, and making
arguments” (p. 1). Tynjala et al. argue “[w]riting is a tool for thinking and a tool for
learning.” Bonwell and Eison add that informal in-class writing exercises, which can
even be used in large class sections, can assist in student acquisition of course content.
(References available upon request.) Hence, an argument can be made that improving a
MIS student’s writing abilities by requiring and guiding written assignments can enhance
his or her communication skills and critical thinking abilities while simultaneously
assisting in the acquisition of the key concepts of a given course.
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Specific Goals and Objectives:
Using the grant, we hope to accomplish the following goals.
1. Train MIS faculty to develop and assess writing modules in a consistent manner
across different sections of our courses.
2. Develop specific guidelines and goals for writing within the three courses that
meet both the broad MIS writing objectives and liberal education requirements.
This would enable the faculty to tailor the assignments within their individual
classes, while being consistent across the different sections.
3. Build an integrated set of writing exercises and development of writing skills for
students across the thematic sequence courses. The nature of the writing exercises
within the three courses as developed will build on each other.
4. Develop short teaching modules for delivering common messages to all MIS
majors, minors and thematic students about
a. Writing technical content to a non-technical audience.
b. Writing for various business contexts and audiences (such as memos,
emails, executive summaries etc).
c. Technical writing in Project settings
Potential Impact
The MIS area thematic sequence is currently taken by about 100 students. The new
thematic sequence will be offered for the first time in fall 2005. (We anticipate about the
same numbers). In addition, the courses are also part of our minor and major with about
50 and 100 students, respectively. So in entirety the proposal affects about 250 students.
In addition, the first course in the thematic sequence is our business core course, MIS
235. This course is taken by all business students (roughly 1100-1200 per academic
year).
Writing in a business context differs from writing in other genres. We find that our
students write elegantly when they get to our courses, but struggle with the concise and
directed writing required in a business setting. MIS 235 is a course taken very early in a
School of Business student’s career. Providing instruction in business writing at this
early stage will leave plenty of time for further practice and perhaps perfection in future
courses.
The MIS professional also works with both technical audiences (developers,
programmers) and business professionals. This requires that the MIS student develop the
ability to present complex technical content to non technical audiences. This ability will
provide the student to hopefully understand his/her knowledge of the technical content
better as they present the material to non technical audiences. The expertise they gain
from this endeavor would help them build skills for effective communication in other
courses.
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The MIS profession has undergone a structural change in the past few years due to
outsourcing. A significant percentage of their work now is in writing technical
specifications (project requirements), project plans, monitoring progress and providing
written feedback. Such technical writing skills will better prepare the MIS student for
their work environment and can be used in the rest of our courses.
This work is also the first major initiative within the School of Business to improve
writing across the curriculum. It could potentially provide a platform from which other
School of Business departments could build similar sequences.
Project Plan
The courses in the two thematic sequences will potentially be taught by all members of
the faculty within the MIS area. In order to get everyone aligned and on the same page in
terms of writing, a series of sessions will be held in Fall 2005. This will involve a kick off
one day session followed by a smaller (1-2 hour) session every month. We will work with
both the Center for Writing Excellence and the Howe Center in all our efforts.
In addition, a smaller group of faculty (the three applicants and the MIS 302 coordinator)
will be involved in working with the CWE and Howe writing center in
a) Designing and development of learning modules and the writing assignments
b) Communicating the writing expectations
c) Developing grading rubrics for assessing assignments
d) Providing assessment and feedback to students
Assessment Strategy
We will collect some samples of student writing from our MIS 235 in Spring 2005. We
will compare the MIS 235 writing in Spring 2005 with samples in Fall 2005 and spring
2006. This will be done by Dr. Benamati in conjunction with CWE staff.
There is currently no coordinated effort for MIS 302 classes yet and we do not have
established current criteria for writing there. However, we will collect the final exam of
MIS 302 class which involves some short answer and essay questions. We will also
collect some sample student data in Fall 2005. We will compare this writing from student
data in Spring 2006. The sample data will all be stored with CWE staff and will be
anonymous. There will be no mechanism to associate a student with their writing.
The other two courses MIS 303 and MIS 404 are brand new courses and have not been
taught as yet. Hence, we cannot do pre and post analysis of writing in these courses.
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Team Members
The principal contacts include T.M. Rajkumar, Skip Benamati and Jeff Merhout from
within the MIS area. However, the entire MIS faculty, particularly the faculty teaching
MIS 235 (potentially all) and MIS 302 will be involved in this effort. In addition, the
CWE staff and the Howe center staff will be involved in this effort.
Schedule
MIS 235: The teaching modules and assignment guidelines will be in place for Fall 2005.
Dr. Benamati will coordinate this effort. He is also applying for an individual grant in the
summer of 2005. He anticipates working in the summer to develop the
MIS 302: While we have some initial efforts set up for this course, a coordinated effort of
all faculty teaching MIS 302 will take place in Fall 2005. Detailed goals for writing
within this course will be developed in Fall 2005. Writing assignment guidelines and
modules where it will be included will also be developed in Fall 2005. This will be pilot
tested in Spring 2006 and modifications made based on the pilot in Summer 2006. It will
be fully implemented in Fall 2006.
MIS 303/404: We will work on building the writing goals and assignments during Spring
of 2006 with implementation in the 2006-2007 academic year.
Budget
Professional Development Funds for faculty
3000
( $600 each for three principal grant applicants,
$600 for MIS 302 coordinator, these four people will be the
small faculty group that will work more closely with the CWE)
$100 each for the other six MIS faculty attending the kick off
seminar and three monthly sessions)
Funds to bring in an expert in MIS writing for a seminar
Funds to offset increased Howe Center Support needs
1000
1000
Presenting the Results
In Aug 2006, we will write a report on our experiences with the grant, and report on the
progress made in writing within our curriculum. We will also share the results of our
efforts at CWE/Howe center sponsored events to help disseminate the knowledge of what
works for us and what did not. Dr Benamati is interested in writing up the results of the
MIS 235 efforts for a journal or conference. We will also write about our entire effort for
MIS teaching journals such as the Journal of Information System Education, and present
our findings at conferences such as IBSCA.
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Summary
This funding is necessary to help us further refine our goal of bringing more writing
instruction and experience into both the School of business and the Management
Information Systems curriculum. As most of the faculty within the MIS area would
likely end up teaching our thematic sequence courses, the grant becomes essential to
ensure that all MIS faculty feel comfortable with and in the use of writing within our
courses. These efforts would ensure that we develop a more rounded, and better prepared
MIS student.
Thank you for your consideration. If you need any more information, please feel free to
contact any one of us.
T.M. Rajkumar (529-4830)
Skip Benamati (529-4835)
Jeffrey Merhout (529-8340)
Decision Sciences and MIS
David Yen, Chair Department of DSC/MIS
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Date _________________
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