The Role of Skills in the Development of the Un- dergraduate Curriculum: The Case for Double- Loop Learning in Decision-Making

This paper encourages a reflective long-view of the IS undergraduate curriculum which suggests that the professional marketplace has consistently valued the same core IT skills. The conundrum faced by department chairs and curriculum committees is how to adjust to changes in the IT environment and marketplace while also fostering a core of basic IT skills which lead to a consistent tradition of IT skills for the IS discipline. We highlight Argyris and Schön’s (1974, 1978, 1996) work on organizational learning as a philosophical and theoretical lens through which the curriculum decision-making process can be better understood. To wit: cycles of skills and learning assessment, which utilize key constituents to provide feedback loops for error detection and correction, both promotes and restrains the tendency to react and over-react in curricular decisionmaking. Towards this end, the 2010 AIS/ACM model curriculum is considered against previous model curricula in order to examine the degree to which the need for basic IT skills has actually changed. Future research directions are discussed which will facilitate inquiry into which IT skills have consistently mattered in the Information Systems discipline over the last 20 years. It is our Information Systems Educators Conference 2010 ISECON Proceedings Nashville Tennessee, USA v27 n1391 ©2010 EDSIG (Education Special Interest Group of the AITP) Page 2 www.aitp-edsig.org /proc.isecon.org position that a cycle of reflective learning is needed to undertake appropriate error correction and detection in the process of curricular decision-making.