Is this the right forum for this? We all know of the imminent and unwelcome restructuring facing us. Where does the future lie for this discipline, or can we even define what our discipline is? We're constantly reminded now that our HE degrees are products, our students are customers, and so what are we, retailers? Compared to many other "products" in this HE marketplace our products are relatively unpopular despite the fact that there are fewer universities providing what we do compared to a decade ago.
I constantly struggle to explain what it is we do and can therefore understand why students have difficulty in placing it in context. Perhaps a business school isn't the right environment but then neither is a computing department, or it doesn't seem to be, and we don't fit into education or anywhere else.
What is the long term future for this discipline, whatever it is?
It's St. Patrick's day (not St. Paddy's, or St. Pat's or Paddy's day) so I'm off for Guinness in the local.
Finding a physical home for 'our area' is difficult, and I don't think LJMU is the only institution that has this problem. The old Department of Information Science at Strathclyde used to belong to Strathclyde Business School but then became a standalone department, before merging with Computing Science to create CIS! I believe a similar thing happened down under at CSU, and probably at dozens of other institutions.
ReplyDeleteBut, as you say, I guess this is because it's difficult to define 'our area'. I think my knowledge and experience spans general information management stuff, web technologies, LIS and bits of computing. I think this is the same for many people in our team and ex-colleagues. I don't know how you would label this though! And therein lies the problem!
Personally I think a business school is a great place for Information Stategy. I come from the more 'Engineering' end of 'Information Systems' hence I am aware that 'Computer Science' is a very broad field in itself. The dilema is are we the 'Business' end of 'Computer Science' or the 'Computing' end of 'Business'.
ReplyDeleteI think the difference is partly in what we teach which takes the business and considers the models from a knowledge, information and systems perspective and contemplates the effect of technology. But our approach is to consider what is to be done rather than gathering the skills in terms of the technology to do it. This might seem like we are developing arm chair generals. But actually understanding the problem is a key part of the issue in Business Information Systems, requirements capture is just as much an area of issue as software development is.
But I agree that the difficultly of delivering a simple 'story' about what we do can confuse the potential students and the institution.
My late Grandad was an academic chemist from a London Poly. He claimed that he didn't know if he was sub-dean of the faculty or dean of the sub-faculty. Perhaps universities have been shuffling their structures for a while.