Increasing the Quality and Quantity of Tertiary-Level Information Systems Students: A Graduate Development Framework

Abstract

This article forms part of research-in-progress aimed toward creating a comprehensive graduate development framework that will assist Information Systems (IS) departments in increasing the quality and quantity of their enrollments and graduates. In this article, we present the IS Graduate Development Framework (ISGDF). This framework combines concepts from four related fields of IS study into a single framework for identifying the graduate development potential of IS institutions, courses, and development projects. These four fields of study are: (i) Information and Communication Technology for Development, (ii) economic labor market theory that relates to IS labor, (iii) a study of IS education concepts and course structures, and (iv) a study of IS labor within the creative industries. We present the ISGDF based on literature from these fields of study and show how this framework can be applied by means of a comprehensive case study example. The case study gives a detailed account of how the framework was used to identify, and improve, the graduate development potential of an IS graduate development project. Findings from the case study include several areas for possible improvement of IS curricula to increase the graduate development potential of IS departments. Although the case study was conducted in a South African context, we suggest that the ISGDF, and case study findings report in this article, can be useful for informing IS departments toward increasing graduate quality and quantity in their own contexts.