Teaching Information Systems to International ...

Chapter XX

Teaching Information Systems to International Students in Australia: A Global Information Technology Persective Zhaohao Sun Hebei Normal University, China

ABSTRACT GIT and GIS have a significant impact on the undergraduate and postgraduate programs offered in universities in Australia. Further, how to teach IT and IS to international students has been becoming a significant issue for IT and IS programs offered in Australia, in particular in the context of a fiercely competitive market of international students and in the context of GIT and GIS. However, these topics have not drawn the attention of academic researchers so far. This chapter will fill this gap by examining the impact of global information technology on universities in Australia in such areas as curriculum development, textbooks and teaching, and looking at some issues in teaching information technology and information systems to international students from different countries with different IT and IS backgrounds based on the author’s working and teaching experience in three different universities in Australia. This chapter also makes a daring prediction for the impact of GIT on international education in Australia and proposes a few viable strategies for resolving some issues facing international education for IT and IS in Australia. The proposed approach is very useful for research and development of GIT and GIS as well as for IT/IS programs in Australian universities.

INTRODUCTION Global information technology (GIT) and global information systems (GIS) are not a new concept, because Manheim (1992) discusses the critical

issues and strategic opportunities for globally competing firms using GIT and GIS. Palvia (1997) proposes a model of the global and strategic impact of information technology (IT). Palvia, Jain Palvia, and Whitworth (2002) also address

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Teaching Information Systems to International Students in Australia

some key issues of GIT and provide a model for analyzing global IT issues. Akmanligil and Palvia (2004) discuss strategies for GIS development, in which they consider GIS as it is used across one or more national borders. However, like global economy, GIT and GIS have a significant impact on the undergraduate and postgraduate programs offered in universities in Australia. In particular, the international students have dominated the student numbers that enrolled in IT and information systems (IS) in Australian universities. The majority of students enrolled in IT/IS postgraduate programs (by course work) are from Asia, mainly from China and India. For example, there were 16 students in a subject entitled Decision Support Systems taught by this author in Autumn 2006, and only one of these was Australian. The rest were from Asian countries. However, “global information technology in Australia” cannot be Googled in its “scholar” world, which implies that this topic has not drawn the attention of academic researchers so far. This chapter will fill the gap by examining GIT and its impacts on IT and IS education in Australian universities. Further, how to teach IT and IS to international students has been becoming a significant issue for IT and IS programs offered in Australia, in particular in the context of a fiercely competitive market of international students and in the context of GIT and GIS. However, this issue has been technically ignored to some extent in universities in Australia. The administrators might believe that the key to teaching IT and IS in the international student-filled environment is to use flexible teaching methods in an online teaching and learning environment. This chapter will analyze some issues of teaching IT and IS international students based on my working and teaching experience in three different universities in Australia. My working and studying experience in China and Germany will certainly affect the discussion in the chapter. The term IT is frequently used today not only within universities and colleges but also by individuals and governments. Strictly speaking, IT in Australia covers all disciplines of computing, at least from a viewpoint of immigration policies. Because there are some differences between IT

and IS within universities, I have used IT and IS or both in some contexts. The rest of the chapter is organized as follows. The next section examines international education in Australia, followed by a look at IT and IS in Australian universities from a global viewpoint. I then discuss the impacts of GIT on IT and IS in Australia, as well as my experience teaching IT and IS in Australia as an example of GIT. The next section discusses the future trend for IT and IS in Australia. I end the chapter with some concluding remarks and by proposing future research directions.

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA This section will examine international education in Australia within a context of globalization. Therefore, GIT can be considered as a part of international education. Harman (2002) considers Australia as a major higher education exporter. He also discusses internationalization of higher education within a context of globalization. The higher education sector in Australia comprises 37 public and three private autonomous and self-accrediting universities, and four other autonomous and self-accrediting institutions. Internationalization of higher education in Australia has made significant progress since the 1980s. In 2004, 362,092 students commenced higher education in Australia, 107,142 of them being international students from overseas (DEST, 2005). This means that international students accounted for about 30% of the total new enrolled students in Australian universities in 2004. Marginson (2004) points out that “between 1990 and 2002 the number of international students enrolled in Australian universities increased from 24,998 to 185,058.” Lukic, Broadbent, and Maclachlan (2004) also noted that the enrollments of international students in Australian universities increased 123% from 1997 to 2002. Therefore, “international students are making up a substantial and growing proportion of Australian higher


education students.” At the same time, “by 2001 Australia spent only 0.8% of GDP on the public funding of higher education, which was half the level of public investment in 1975, although the national rate of participation in higher education had doubled since then” (Marginson, 2004). This also means that Australian higher education has been marketoriented. However, Australia provided scholarships to about 2% of the total international full-fee paying students, while the United States provided scholarships to 25% of its international students in 2002 (Marginson, 2004). This is why more than 50,000 postgraduate students of a total 60,000 international students from China are studying in universities in the U.S. Therefore, there is less financial support to international students including research students and PhD students in Australia. Nevertheless, Australian universities have been enjoying the success of the commercialization of education, because international education has become Australia’s third largest services export. In 2002, universities earned $1.45 billion in student fees (13% of revenues), and Australia earned about $5 billion in total from international students spending on fees, food, transport, accommodations, living costs, and entertainment, on and offshore (Marginson, 2004). International higher education “has provided Australian universities with large numbers of able and highly motivated students. This has been particularly important for research programs in fields such as engineering and IT” (Harman, 2002, p. 11). Furthermore, Harman (2002) notes that in some departments and faculties, well over 50% of enrollments are from international students. Therefore, international students have been playing a critical role in Australian higher education and economy since then, although not all Australians share this common sense. Marginson (2004) acknowledges that Australian international education is price dependent rather than quality dependent, because Australia commercializes its high education and tries to export its higher education as a product, in order to increase its revenue and improve its international reputation of higher education and at the same time promote international friendship and understanding especially with its neighboring nations (Harman,

2002). Further, Asian students believe that Australia is one of the most important destinations for their international education, because their expectation for studying in Australian universities is to obtain a higher academic degree, improve their English, and possibly (many of them) to become a permanent resident in Australia or obtain a high-profit position after returning to their own country.

IT AND IS IN AUSTRALIA: A GLOBAL VIEWPOINT This section reviews IT and IS in Australia, taking into account computing disciplines. This can be considered an impact of GIT on higher education in Australia from a general viewpoint.

Computing Classification and Its Impact in Australia Significant developments have changed the landscape of the computing disciplines since the 1990s in the United States (CC, 2004). Computer engineering (CE) has become an independent discipline from electrical engineering (EE). Software engineering (SE) emerged as an area within computer science (CS) and now is a discipline unto itself. IS has become a discipline within business or an independent discipline. IT emerged in the context of business and CS, and also became a discipline in the later 1990s, as shown in Figure 1. This means that computing disciplines mainly consist of CS, CE, IS, EE, IT, and SE, although one normally uses IT to represent all these disciplines, as mentioned in the first section. Further, the CE, SE, IT, and IS shown in Figure 1 can be considered as the “overlapping” disciplines in the current classification. They have played a significant role in computing degree programs in higher education of Australia, because about one-third of computing degree programs in Australian universities are IT and IS programs. CE and SE degree programs are only offered in some universities such as at La Trobe University and the University of New South Wales. The above classification (CC, 2004, 2005) of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM),


the Association for Information Systems (AIS), and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS) has been reflected in the configuration of faculty in some universities in Australia. For example, the Faculty of IT at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has three departments: Computer Systems, Software Engineering, and Information Systems (http://it.uts.edu.au/about/department/index.html), while the University of New South Wales has a School of Computer Science and Engineering (http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/people/index. html). Information systems courses offered at this university are in the Faculty of Commerce and Economics. Some universities still use computing as the name of their faculty or school or department to cover any teaching and research activity of a technical nature involving computers (CC, 2005). Macquarie University has a Department of Computing. Some universities such as Griffith University use Computing and Information Technology as the faculty name, in order to keep the influence of traditional computing; at the same time, it does not like to lose the market of IT. Some Australian universities have not classified computing according to the disciplines as shown in Figure 1. For example, Internet computing and information security and intelligence have become relatively recent disciplines offered at universities in Australia such as www.ecu.edu.au. Information and knowledge management (IKM) has a trend of separating itself from IS, although many

Australian universities offer subjects or courses on IKM in the context of IS. Bond University has only offered Information Technology. The reason is that the degree programs of IT and IS offered at universities in Australia are very market oriented and always adjusted according to the change of market, which has been experienced in the past decade, because of significant ups and downs in IT and IS. It is difficult to predict that IT and IS can resume to the peak of 2000-2001 in Australia, although some IS and IT researchers believe that IT and IS have been recovering since 2005 in the United States.

IS and Its Programs in Australia What is IS? This is a meta-question like, What is artificial intelligence (AI)? Generally speaking, IS is a discipline that integrates IT solutions and business processes to meet the information needs of businesses and other organizations, and enables organizations to achieve their objectives in an effective and efficient way (CC, 2005). While IT stresses T (technology), IS emphasizes I (information). In Australia, IT and IS are closer, compared with other computing disciplines (as shown in Figure 1). IS as a discipline began more than 50 years ago to address the data processing needs of business in the areas of accounting, payroll, and inventory. The Association for Information Technology

Figure 1. Disciplines in computing based on CC 2005 Pre-1990s CS

EE+CE

IS

Hardware Software

Hardware

Business

Current

IT EE

Hardware

CE

CS Software

SE

Organizational needs

IS Business


Professionals (AITP), founded in 1951, played an important role in the early development of IS, while the Association for Information Systems (AIS, https://www.aisnet.org/), founded in 1994, is playing an increasingly important role in global IS. Before the 1990s, IS specialists had mainly ties with business or commerce schools and did not have much interaction with computer scientists and electrical engineers (CC, 2004). However, this has been changed in universities in Australia, because some IS programs have been offered in the Faculty of Information Technology, as does UTS. IS also has alternative names, such as Business Informatics offered at Murdoch University (http:// handbook.murdoch.edu.au/courses /detail06. lasso?crscdhb=34225) or Business Information Technology (BIT) offered by the University of Adelaide, which claims that the Bachelor of BIT degree “offers students knowledge and skills in the application of modern IT within business. It integrates courses taught by the School of Commerce and the School of Computer Science. The degree program aims to develop knowledge, skills and understanding in the application of IT to developing business solutions” (http://www.adelaide. edu.au/programs/ug/prog/comm/#bitech). IS also has alternative names such as MIS (management information systems), which is offered by ECU (www.ecu.edu.au), and business information systems (BIS), which “recognizes the critical role of information and information systems in modern business practice,” offered in the Faculty of Economics and Businesses at the University of Sydney (www.usyd.edu.au). It should be noted that http://www.utas.edu.au/ infosys/cgi/is_depts/ provides detailed information for IS programs offered at universities in Australia. From this Web site we can see that almost every university in Australia offers IT and IS programs for undergraduate and/or postgraduate students.

Global Information Systems in Australia IT and IS have been affected by globalization. For example, the Association for Information Systems, located in the United States, has been influencing

IS in Australia. Basically speaking, the AIS (2006) listed the following topics as the key areas of IS, at least for the Master’s in Information Systems programs • • • • • • • • • • • • •

IT infrastructure. Introduction to programming. Algorithms and data structures. Data management. Analysis, modeling, and design. Enterprise models. IT governance. IT strategy and policy. Project and change management. IS sourcing. Ethical implications of IS/IT. Social and cultural aspects of IS. Global issues in IS.

All of these are reflected in the programs of IS education in Australia, because the textbooks are usually imported from the UK or United States directly, which will be discussed in more detail in the next section.

GLOBAL IT AND IS IN AUSTRALIA This section will further examine GIT and its impacts on Australian universities from an IT and IS viewpoint.

Background With the development of the Internet at the end of the last century, IT and IS are offered as undergraduate and postgraduate programs by almost all universities in Australia. The number of students enrolled in IT and IS programs reached its peak in 2002-2003 like other developed countries. Some universities offer IT and IS in the Faculty of Information Technology (e.g., www.uts.edu.au). Other universities offer them in different faculties (e.g., www.uow.edu.au). With the strong competition of educational markets of international students, it is said that the number of international students enrolled in IT and IS programs in universities


in Australia has not been satisfactory in the past two years. In this case, some administrators have tried to improve the strategies of teaching methods, teaching/learning environments, programs offered, and reconstruction or reconfiguration of academic staff in order to attract international students. However, it seems that the strategies have not essentially changed the situation faced. As an academic staff member, I worked at a university in China for more than 13 years, at two German universities for more than three years, and at three Australian universities for more than seven years. What I can do is to try to understand the background of international students and improve my teaching art, in order to help the universities I worked for to attract international students. In a later section, I will go into each of them in greater detail.

Global IT and Its Impact on IT in Australia: An Immigration Viewpoint Global information technology has drawn increasing interest and research since the end of the last century. GIT mainly consists of three components (Palvia et al., 2002): GIT-1: information systems and technology that are global in scope; GIT-2: information systems and technology in different cultures and different countries; and GIT-3: IT products and services that are built in one country and used in another. We will address each of them in what follows. With the dramatic development of the Internet at the end of the last century, many developed countries carried out beneficial strategies to attract international students to study IT and IS in their own countries. For example, Australia uses immigration policies to attract international students to study IT or IS at Australian universities. More specifically, if one international student graduates from an IT or IS program at a university in Australia and applies for permanent residence in Australia, then he or she can get an immigration bonus, and his or her degree (bachelor or master) has also enjoyed relatively higher migration marks and his or her application can be processed within a relatively shorter time (three months) (2001-2003). This policy integrating computing and migration

attracted many Asian students to come Australia to study IT and IS programs. This belongs to GIT2, because information systems and technology are taught to students from different cultures and different countries. It can be also considered as GIT-3, because the IT products and services available in Australia are used by students from other countries such as China. In this way, Australia helps the Chinese government with providing IT services to the young generation, although this is only applicable to some relatively rich Chinese families (which also belongs to GIT-3). Even so, it relieves the pressure resulting from the unmet social requirements from the higher degree education of China. At the same time, Australia received huge revenues from higher education export, as mentioned earlier. Furthermore, like global economy, IT and IS have also experienced a process of globalization, because there are a growing number of globally mobile jobs in fields of business, computing including IT and IS, and scientific research (Marginson, 2004). Marginson (2004) demonstrates that: “Australia has positioned itself as a high growth provider by good marketing and management, inventive off-shore engagement, a specialization in high-volume standard-cost training in business and IT, improving non-academic services, proximity to Asia, a friendly climate and a peaceful social atmosphere and a price advantage over the USA and UK deriving from a weak Australian dollar.” IT including CS, CE, EE, SE, and IS is one of the three most favorite fields for international students to study in universities in Australia (Lukic et al., 2004). The other two fields are management and health. The immigration policies of Australia promote this trend, because an international student with a higher degree from a university in Australia (master, bachelor) can easily obtain permanent residence in Australia, as mentioned earlier, which is still valid for the time being.

Global IT and Its Impacts on IT in Australia: A Comparative Viewpoint Marginson (2004) notes that Australian education in IT is much the same as American or British


education. This can be only considered as a highlevel abstraction or summary. More specifically, the higher education system of Australia is inherited from that of Britain. For example, the bachelor for IT is a three-year program; it takes students in the United States and China four years in order to obtain a bachelor’s degree in IT. This is because the superstructure of Australia is based on that of Britain. From a GIT viewpoint, this is a successful application of British IT and IS services and products to the higher education of Australia. Therefore, this belongs to GIT-3. However, Americanization of higher education also has impressive influence on higher education in Australia. For example, a large number of textbooks for IT and IS undergraduate students are from the course technology publisher (http://www. course.com/). It is said that these textbooks can be considered a product of outsourcing IT and IS of the United States to Australia. Frankly speaking, the textbooks from this publisher are more teaching-friendly compared with other international publishers that I have encountered in the past years, because it provides the lecturer or instructor (http://www.course.com/irc/IR.cfm) with: • • • • • •

An instructor manual with lesson plans and teaching tips. A sample syllabus including assignments, quizzes, and exams. PowerPoint presentation slides (although they usually must be revised, updated, and significantly extended). Figure files Solutions to exercises or problems. A test bank and test engine (based on the ExamView).

PowerPoint presentation slides are of practical significance, because they require lecturers to take a lot of effect and time. “Teachers are more and more expecting material and help from the authors and the publishers of a textbook” (Furbach, 2003). However, PowerPoint presentation slides provided by some publishers are not carefully and professionally designed or drafted taking into account class teaching and time arrangement. They usually must

be revised, updated, and significantly extended. For example, this author used a textbook for postgraduate students (BUSS 950). The publisher provides lecture slides for each chapter in the textbook. However, the number of the lecture slides for each chapter is only five or six, which is obviously not sufficient for a teaching period lasting 45 or 90 minutes. Therefore, this textbook will be not used in the future. Further, it is obvious that the textbooks are not localized based on the characteristics of Australia, although the cover page of the textbook told the readers that it is an “International Student Edition not for sale in the U.S.” (Satzinger, Jackson, & Burd, 2004). Further, other textbooks for IT and IS undergraduate and postgraduate students are published by a few international publishers located in the United States and UK such as Addison-Wesley (www.personed. uk), McGraw-Hill (www.mhhe.com), and Prentice Hall. In the past six years, I have used eight different textbooks for lecturing or teaching eight subjects for IT and IS undergraduate and postgraduate students at three universities in Australia. However, no textbooks are published by an Australian-owned publisher. Therefore, this belongs to GIT-1 and GIT-3. This is also the reason why the price of every textbook in Australian universities is very high, making it difficult for some students from developing countries to afford them. In this case, some students believe that it is very difficult for a lecturer to deliver “highquality teaching” because he or she does not have his or her own published textbook, and therefore some lecturers can be easily considered as an “advanced photocopier”photocopying knowledge, information, and data from textbooks for students without any further process or update, although these are extreme cases. However, some universities in Australia still claim that they provide “high-quality teaching” to students and use it to attract international students. This has not drawn any attention in some academic staff of IT and IS in Australia. “Who cares” may be the answer from them, because they are enjoying the hegemony of culture and English. It seems the Australian government has also not provided sufficient money to support development of its own system of textbooks for IT and IS. One of the possible reasons for this is that Australia has a population of only about


20 million, and it is difficult and also not necessary to establish a perfect system of Australian-owned textbooks. Based on the above discussion, we can come to a conclusion that one of the consequences of GIT is that the textbooks for IT and IS will be dominated by a few publishers from the UK and U.S.; at least this is true for the English-speaking world.

Global IT and Its Impacts on IT Curricula in Australia The Association for Computing Machinery, Association for Information Systems, and IEEE Computer Society worked together and proposed Computing Curricula 2004 (CC, 2004) and 2005 (CC, 2005) in order to guide the undergraduate degree programs of computing offered by universities in the United States. These curricula have also influenced similar programs offered by the universities in Australia. The computing disciplines include computing engineering, computing science, information systems, information technology, and software engineering, as mentioned earlier. CC 2005 listed 50 topics with values ranging between 0 and 5 and relative emphasis (min-max) for each kind of computing degree program for undergraduate students on each given topic. I examined the emphasis of IS programs on each of the 50 topics in order to help improve the existing curriculum in 2004. I used a three-level method for teaching and research of IS: • • •

Level 1 topics with values not less than 4: These are most important for teaching and research of IS. Level 2 topics with the value of 3: These are important for teaching and research of IS. Level 3 topics with values less than or equal to 2: These are less important, at least uncertain for teaching and research of IS. However, they can be involved in research.

Based on CC 2004 and CC 2005, I found that the first-level topics out of the mentioned 50 topics are as follows:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Programming fundamentals Human-computer interaction Information management (DB) practice Management of IS organization Organizational behavior Legal/professional/ethics/society Information systems development Project management Analysis of business requirements E-business Distributed dystems Systems integration Mathematical foundations Interpersonal communication

Each of the above 14 topics are emphasized in the IS program for undergraduate students in Australian universities, to some extent, except topic 13, because mathematical foundations are technically ignored in some IS programs in some universities in Australia. For example, I taught Information Systems Development at an Australian university using the same name as the subject for IT undergraduate students at another Australian university in the subject name of Systems Design and Architecture. From an Australian viewpoint, therefore, IT and IS are borderless. In other words, the curricula for IT and IS used in Australian universities have also been affected by the computing curricula designed by the special task force in the United States of ACM, AIS, and IEEE-CS, and therefore belongs to GIT-1 and GIT-3.

TEACHING IT AND IS TO INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS IN AUSTRALIA As just stated, teaching IT and IS to international students in Australia belongs to GIT-1 and GIT-3. Therefore it is significant to describe the teaching experience of individuals and discuss some issues in the teaching activities in the context of GIT and GIS. The universities in Australia promote a multicultural academic and learning environment in order to improve their international reputations


or prestige, because international students have become more and more important to the Australian higher education system. However, there are still some members of the academic staff that do not care about the difference between international higher education students and their domestic counterparts. They have neither time nor interest to think about this difference, so they try to propose some corresponding strategies to improve their teaching in the environment of international education. In order to avoid this extreme case, I would like first to examine this difference, before going into the teaching of IT and IS to international students. Lukic et al. (2004) have addressed these issues and emphasized that the range of cultures of international students is hugely diverse, and the range of educational expectations and requirements are equally diverse. They suggest that these should be taken into account when trying to attract international students to Australian universities and providing quality education services to the growing international market. However, they have not provided viable strategies for teaching international students. In fact, English is not the first language of most international students, in particular from China, although English is not an issue for international students from India. As we know, Chinese and English belong to two different linguistic systems and lead to two different culturestraditions and lifestyles, and working styles. Chinese culture shares some common values with the cultures of other countries such as Thailand and Korea. They are very sensitive to the hegemony, prejudice, and arrogance of language and culture that resulted from imperialism. In order to resolve these issues, a lecturer should be patient in the consultation of students, and carefully provide comments on the students’ assignments, speaking English smoothly and slowly in lecture and tutorial time. A lecturer should supervise some research students from developing countries, in particular from non-English-speaking countries such as China, if possible, and can improve his or her patience and tolerance, and lessen the mentioned prejudice and arrogance of language and culture. The prejudice of language and culture and the arrogance of behaviors can only

damage the future of GIT and GIS and the future of the lecturer himself or herself. In the first university in Australia, I taught Information Technology 2, Information Systems Development, and E-Commerce to undergraduate and postgraduate IT students. In the second Australian university, I lectured and tutored quantitative methods for information systems for undergraduate IS students. In the past two years, I satisfactorily taught the following subjects for either undergraduate students or postgraduate students: • • • • • • • •

BUSS218: Systems design and architecture BUSS211: Requirements determination & systems analysis BUSS 907: Fundamentals of e-business BUSS911: Intelligent systems BUS926: Decision support systems BUSS929: Information systems research methods BUSS 945: Information systems research BUSS950: Systems development methodologies (as a coordinator and lecturer)

I also tried to realize my teaching philosophy, which consists of student-centered teaching activities, teaching informed by research, and integrating Who’s Who theory and practice with respect to the subject at every lecture or tutorial. In what follows, we will look at each of these in some detail. It should be noted that the teaching of many different subjects within a short time is not appropriate for a lecturer, although this is not seldom in Australian universities. This also implies that the academic staff in the field of IS and IT in Australia should be extended or improved or require more influence from GIS.

Teaching with International Vision With the importance of ranking of world universities (annually) to the international prestige of a university, a university cannot always stay as a “local” or “regional” university, although this is still true for some universities in Australia or in China. The fierce competition of the educational market of international students requires a lecturer with


international vision. That is, a lecturer should teach his or her students with international vision. Teaching with international vision can encourage lecturers to train the students with international vision. Students will eventually participate in the competition of global economy. If one student has no international vision, it is difficult for him or her to effectively contribute to his or her business or organization in the context of global economy. Harman (2002) also shares the similar idea that “governments have come to see the need for their workforces to be internationally competitive as prerequisites to economic growth” (Herman, 2002, p. 4). Teaching with international vision can encourage lecturers to patiently learn and understand different languages and different cultures from his or her native language and culture. Therefore, he or she can really know why patience, generosity, and friendlinessnot from business, but from the heartare most important in the teaching of international students from developing countries, in particular from those of past colonized or semicolonized countries. In this way, the teaching of international students can be changed into “a form of foreign aid and cultural exchange rather than only a source of revenue” (Marginson, 2004). Teaching with international vision can be considered an integrated part of global higher education. Teaching with international vision will lead a lecturer to undertake research and community engagement with international vision. Therefore, the international prestige of a university will eventually be improved.

Student-Centered Teaching Activities Student-centered teaching activities are a necessary requirement from a nation, society, and student standpoint, because Australia is a multicultural and service-centered country. The service-centered community always requires customer-centered activities, like a sales assistant in a supermarket who always considers customer-centered activities. A student in a university in Australia is a special customer, and a lecturer is a special sales assistant.

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Therefore, student-centered teaching is a necessary condition for any successful teaching. Student-centered teaching activities are also a requirement from a mass higher education standpoint. In elite higher education (e.g., that in the 1980s in China and Germany), teaching activities were lecturer-centered. Students generally had to follow the suggestions and decisions of lecturers to study and arrange all their study activities. However, it seems that elite higher education has been changed into mass higher education worldwide. In this case, students have more power in making compromise for the teaching/learning activities. Student-centered teaching activities are also a requirement in a market economy. In market-oriented higher education, the student can select the subjects or programs which in turn force the lecturer or university to take into account the interest of students. In particular, in the case that international students become more and more important to higher education of Australia, student-centered teaching activities become more necessary. For example, one lecturer teaches a subject for IS undergraduates in a university in Australia, and the failure rate of his or her students passing the final examination of his or her subject is about 47%. The consequence is that the majority of students could not select this subject any more if the lecturer still coordinates and lectures it. Some international students called the lecturer “killer.” In the long term, this will affect the number of international students at this university. Some universities or faculties are still suffering from such killers. I have tried to do my best to realize this philosophy. For example, I used the online teaching tools (WebCT Vista) to let students access the lecture/tutorial materials/notes easily. I also used PowerPoint visuals to design lecture/tutorial notes. At the same time, I used e-mail twice for every subject that I lectured (one is in Week 4, another is in Week 8 or 9) through (SMP Central) to ask the students to e-mail what should be improved, what failed in the teaching activities, and what the expectation of the students is and how I could improve that from a student viewpoint. After receiving the e-mails from students, I would re-


spond to each of them carefully and timely. Some students said “this is an excellent realization of student-centered teaching.”

Integrating Who’s Who, Theory, and Practice Integrating Who’s Who, theory, and practice with respect to the subject at every lecture or tutorial is of practical significance, because the textbooks for IS students (the second year or more) lack the personal histories of relevant people in the area. These are normally a simple stack of knowledge, theory, techniques, methods, and principles in a domain. For example, BUSS 218 used the textbook, Systems Analysis & Design in a Changing World, Course Technology (Satzinger et al., 2004). This is one of the excellent textbooks. However, it has no story about Who’s Who for any science or knowledge discovery in the history of modern computing. This author had to add as many case studies and personal stories of relevant people in the area as possible to make the lectures more interesting for students while lecturing theory and helping the students with practice in the computer lab. For example, I introduced to the student many ACM Turing awards winners such as John McCarthy, H.A. Simon, Edgar F. Codd, Niklaus Wirth, and Andrew Chi-Chih Yao to name a few; I told them each of the winners is an important player in one area of computer science, IT, and IS, because each of them has made the contributions of lasting and major technical importance to the computer field. For example, when I lectured database design for undergraduate students, I told the story of Edgar F. Codd and his contributions to relational databases in the 1970s. When I lectured intelligent systems, I taught the story of John McCarthy and H.A. Simon and their contributions to artificial intelligence. Just as one should never forget the past, a student of IT and IS should also know Who’s Who in the field of computing. More importantly, the students can obtain lessons, experiences, and heuristics from the history of Who’s Who in the field of computing and can go in a right direction based on the work of the successful pioneers in the field. This is an important necessary condition for

the future of students towards their research and development.

Teaching Informed by Research Teaching informed by research usually appears in the job advertisement for an academic position of a university in Australia. It implies that the successful applicant should integrate his or her research into teaching. To my knowledge, teaching informed by research consists of at least two parts: (1) the lecturer should integrate his or her research activities into his or her teaching, and (2) the lecturer should create a research-oriented academic research and development (R&D) environment. Both parts are critical not only for students but also for academic staff. The successful commitment to the first part can facilitate the constructing knowledge and understanding of students, and at the same time promote the further research of the lecturer. The successful commitment to the second part can facilitate the research curiosity of students and sometimes promote the R&D of both students and academic staff. The successful example in this case is that Bill Gates obtained necessary experience in the research-oriented academic R&D environment of Harvard University before he dropped out and founded Microsoft. Further, teaching informed by research requires that the academic staff must proactively undertake research in related fields of IT and IS in general. In the past few years, this author has actively researched in the fields of experience management, knowledge management, case-based reasoning (CBR) and experience-based reasoning (EBR), intelligent systems, multi-agent systems, e-commerce, e-services, fraud and deception in e-commerce based on mathematical logic, fuzzy logic, artificial intelligence (AI), knowledge-based systems, and system development methodologyall of these belong to IT and IS. In the past, I have published in more than 60 international journals and high-quality international conference proceedings, many of which have been indexed in the ISI’s Science Citation Index (SCI, 14 indices), ISI Proceedings (6 indices), INSPEC (17 indices),

11


and DBLP (12 indices). Since 2004, I published one monograph (Sun & Finnie, 2004), four international journal papers, two book chapters, and 15 international conference papers. All of these can be internationally visible. Based on the above-mentioned research experience, this author has tried to involve my research expertise in every subject that I have taught. For example, I introduced a unified model for integrating algebraic systems, logical systems, and intelligent systems for BUSS911: Intelligent Systems. This model was later published as a paper in the International Journal of Intelligent Systems (Sun & Finnie, 2005). I taught a new perspective: human-like system development architecture to BUSS218 undergraduate students and BUSS950 postgraduate students. This architecture is to be published in the proceedings of an international conference. In fact, this architecture was motivated in the lecturing BUSS218. The students also motivated me to expose any innovative ideas, some of which have been converted into research projects or publications. Furthermore, I realized the “80/20 teaching principle” through this teaching approachthat is, 80% of contents are from the textbooks outsourced from the United States, while 20% are from this author’s research expertise or other available teaching resources. This also avoids the allegation of “advanced photocopier of knowledge.” The studentsin particular, postgraduate studentsfavor such a philosophy. This has been proven by the increasing number of students enrolling in BUSS950 (from 24 to 38) and BUSS911 (from 6 to 16) in past years.

Teaching Related to Community Engagement In the view of this author, development of modern science and technology depends on community engagement of a significant number of researchers and academic staff. Therefore, I have tried to commit to actively engaging in the community as much as possible. For example, I worked as a coordinator for the Information Systems Seminars Series in 2005 in order to promote the research

12

and development of IS and IT in the university at which I worked. At the time, I successfully completed the supervision of an Honors student in 2005, as well as supervised a PhD student with the Thai government scholarship. I supervised a master’s student by research and co-supervised three master’s students by research together with other colleagues. At the same time, I worked as a referee for 10 prestigious international journals including IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. I also worked as a member of the program committee and as a reviewer for 12 international conferences, and won the Award for Best Paper Reviewer, “for providing reviews which demonstrated both insight and constructive feedback,” at the 2nd International Conference on Information Management and Business (IMB, 2006). I chaired sessions at international conferences such as HIS2004 and KES2005, and delivered many outstanding presentations at international conferences. I was one of the co-chairs of the International Workshop on Experience Management and Engineering (EME 2006).

Outcome of Teaching IT and IS and Discussion The teaching surveys demonstrated that this teaching at the university is excellent, because the average score of one teaching survey for lectures in BUSS911 (Autumn 2006) was 5.21 out of 6. The average score of another teaching survey for lectures in BUSS950 (Autumn 2005) was 4.91 out of 6. At the same time, the number of BUSS950 students increased from 24 in 2004 to 38 in 2005, and the number of BUSS911 students increased from 6 in 2004 and 2005 to 16 in 2006. All of this occurred even though the Australian IT and IS market is still experiencing a recession. However, there is still a long way to go for this author to improve my teaching art and performance, because English is not my first language. Teaching performance should be improved for life, because it is a life task for a university teacher. I will try enthusiastically to use more advanced techniques, tools, and strategies to attract students to study the subjects that I teach.


Further, with many years working and studying in China, Germany, and Australia, in my view, high-quality teaching cannot essentially improve the international or national reputation or prestige of a university. It cannot attract international students either. For example, in China, only a normal college emphasizes the priority of high-quality teaching. However, some universities in particular in Australia still use “high-quality teaching” to attract international students. Some heads of schools or departments also use “high-quality teaching” to realize the hegemony or arrogance or prejudice of English, which is an obvious consequence of colonialism and imperialism. This is a tragedy of that university. In the end, research in particular international visible research is the priority of a university. Otherwise, one cannot understand why Harvard University is famous not based on its “high-quality teaching,” but based on its research activities. Furthermore, the well-known Academic Ranking of World Universities, published by Shanghai Jiaotong University (IHE, 2006) and which has drawn increasing attention in Australia, is based on the following criteria:(see Box 1). At least we have not found “high-quality teaching” in the above table. In fact, an outstanding student wants to go to Harvard University, not based on that he likes the “high-quality teaching” at Harvard University but based on its international prestige. Therefore, appropriate use of “high-quality teaching” on a university campus is still a big issue for some universities in both Australia and other countries.

Some Secrets Revealed According to Marginson (2004), “English-language nations enjoy a post-imperial advantage.” In fact, some native-English-speaking students and academic staff are also enjoying English as a hegemony. I once met a Professor Xiks, who asked me, “Do you understand what I said to you?” while using an unfriendly gesture. Although I understood he had said, he did not show any patience and did not know that he was discriminating against a colleague. This is a typical language discrimination. This author also experienced a local postgraduate student whose native language was English. The student tried to do her best to command me as to what she liked to learn and to listen to. She even asked to stop the tutorial whenever she had no time to attend it. If I did not agree, she would use her hegemonic English to make an official complaint to my department head. Although these are the extreme cases, I have suffered in my teaching experience. However, I do realize we are a long way from realizing the dream of global equality, of “everyone is equal.” A multicultural academic environment is still an ideal or goal for Australia to struggle for, because we are still a long way from realizing that. Flexible teaching and learning is also a popular concept in universities in Australia. It seems that a lecturer is required to use a flexible teaching approach in his or her teaching activities. Generally speaking, flexible teaching and learning approaches are (http://www.utas.edu.au/tl /supporting/flexible/index.html):

Box 1. Source: IHE (2006), http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2006/ARWU2006Methodology.htm Criteria

Indicator

Weight

Quality of Education

Alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals

10%

Quality of Faculty

Staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals

20%

Highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories

20%

Articles published in Nature and Science

20%

Articles in Science Citation Index-expanded, Social Science Citation Index

20%

Academic performance with respect to the size of an institution

10%

Research Output

Size of Institution Total

100%

13


• • • •

Learner-centered. About good teaching and learning practices for all students. Less time- and place-dependent than more traditional forms of teaching. Ones that increase the learner’s responsibility for his or her own learning.

The first point is the same as the student-centered teaching activities mentioned earlier. The second point requires a lecturer to use effective teaching methods to teach students. The third point has been realized using e-teaching and learning environments (e.g., based on WebCT Vista), because a lecturer and the students can communicate using WebCT. The lecturer can upload his teaching materials to the WebCT Vista, and the students can access them using WebCT Vista. And the fourth point asks the students to learn in a more flexible way, in particular based on the eteaching and learning environment. However, in practice, it is difficult to realize flexible teaching approaches. Sometimes, this approach easily leads to an arbitrary teaching and learning environment: A lecturer can complete his or her lecture earlier as expected. A student cannot attend a lecture without any kind of permission. WebCT can help a student to download the lecture notes or slides. However, no student has been told that he or she needs not attend the lecture because of WebCT. Even so, the attendance rate for a lecture is on average lower compared with that in the past. If one agrees with the idea that the face-to-face instruction is still dominating the teaching activities, this is a big issue. At least no practical method has been found in order to resolve this issue, in this author’s opinion.

FUTURE TRENDS Based on the previous examination, in particular the impact of GIT on higher education in Australia, we can see that the IT and IS programs in Australian universities will be further affected by those offered by the UK and U.S. through computing curricula and textbooks. At the same time,

14

Australian universities will further try to attract international students worldwide, in particular students from Asian countries, to enroll in their IT/IS degree programs. With the further development of economy in China, Australia will play a more important role in training students from China and possibly establish some or many education training centers (one form of higher education cooperation) in China in order to train Chinese students in China. However, Australia cannot provide 100% Australian-owned IT/IS products or services to international students. The offered IT/IS products normally include computing curricula, textbooks, lecture notes, and examination materials provided by the UK and in particular by the U.S. Like other English-speaking nations, Australia will still “enjoy a post-imperial advantage” (Marginson, 2004) and use English as an important instruction media to promote the GIT and GIS in Australia and some countries in Asia, as shown in Figure 2. However, Australia will face a more intense competition for attracting students from China, together with other English-speaking nations such as the U.S. and UK. The reason is that mass higher education (for undergraduate programs) in China has been carried out since the end of the last century, while the mass higher degree education (for master’s programs and doctoral programs) in China are being changed into more flexible forms like in the U.S. in the past few years. Harman (2002) is also concerned about how quickly and successfully Asian nations expand and strengthen their own systems of higher education which will affect the international education of Australia. This trend will relieve the huge unmet demands of higher degree education from the society of China and at the same time will lessen the possible student potential source that can come to Australia to get similar higher degree education. This is a big issue, because postgraduate programs take a very high proportion of total international students. Furthermore, in the near future, Australia will evolve into a national “advanced” training center like Singapore to train students from Asia, in particular from China; at least this is currently


true in the field of IT and IS, because the majority of students enrolled in IT and IS are from China, Hong Kong (a special administrative region of China), and Taiwan (a province of China). For example, 38 students enrolled in this author’s BUSS950 in 2005. Only one of them was Australian, and another was from Norway. The rest were from Asia, in particular from China. In 2006, 16 postgraduate students (by courses) enrolled in BUSS911. Only one student was Australian, and two students were from Thailand. The rest were from China, including Taiwan and Hong Kong. However, because of difference of superstructure and culture from Singapore and China, Australia should do more with attitudes and behaviors in this direction. Otherwise, young people from China will lose interest in IT and IS programs offered by universities in Australia, and instead they will turn their attention to the UK, United States, and Canada, like Japanese have. This is based on the fact that from a viewpoint of economy, the China of today is the Japan of yesterday. In the 1980s, the products of Japan were seen in every market in the world, like those made in China today. In 2002, 45,960 students from Japan enrolled in universities in United States as the fourth of the 10 principal sources of international students in the U.S. (see Table 1). However, Japan was not listed in the 10 principal sources of international students in Australia in

the same year. The last of the 10 principal sources of international students in 2002 for Australia is Taiwan with 3,977 students (Marginson, 2004). Japan has a population of 128 million, about six times the size of Taiwan (22 million). English is not the native language for either Taiwan or Japan. So, why are there not more than 4,000 students from Japan to enroll in universities in Australia? This case was marginally changed in 2004, because Japan became the tenth of the 10 principal sources of international students in Australia in that year, and the UK was excluded from the 10 principal sources as shown in Table 2. However, compared with the number of international students from Taiwan and the corresponding population, the number of students from Japan is still very low. This requires the policymakers of Australian higher education to do some serious contemplation. In my view, they now have no time to think about the consequences of this comparison, when one day the absolute majority of students from China leave Australia, and China is not listed in the 10 principal sources of international students in Australia. Will that day take a very long time to come? The reader can find the answer somewhere in this chapter. The majority of academic staff working in IT and IS areas in Australia have been thinking about this day for some time! It should be noted that in comparing the number of international students in 2002 and 2004 (shown

Table 1. Ten principal sources of international students in the U.S. and Australia, 2002 (Marginson, 2004) USA 2002-2003

Australia 2002

India

74,603

Singapore

29,956

China

64,757

Hong Kong

26,956

Korea

51,519

Malaysia

23,725

Japan

45,960

China (Mainland)

19,596

Taiwan

28,107

Indonesia

11,981

Canada

26,513

India

8,390

Mexico

12,801

United States

8,325

Turkey

11,601

United Kingdom

5,752

Indonesia

10,432

Thailand

5,202

Thailand

9,982

Taiwan

3,977

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in Tables 1 and 2), we find that Asian countries are the principal source of international students in Australia. Further, China and India are the most important driving forces for international education in Australia, because the number of international students from China and India increased 89% and 94% respectively, while the enrollments of international students in Australia increased 14% annually over the past three years (2002-2004) (DEST, 2005). These are also reasons why it is not yet the time to worry about that special day. To avoid the early coming of that day, Australia immigration policy should not be changed significantly comparing with the current immigration policies. Otherwise, any new tougher immigration policies will encourage international students, in particular many students from China, not to select Australia as the destination for international education. Australian universities should provide more scholarships to international students in order to attract more talented students to study in Australia. Any academic staff should try to stop the direct or indirect hegemony of culture and English as much as possible on any occasion. They should also avoid any direct and indirect, intended or unintended prejudice, discrimination, and arrogance of culture and language, which does still exist to some extent and is ignored by researchers and policymakers. These are very sensitive for any student from a developing country, in particular from Asia.

FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS This chapter examined global information technology and its impact on universities in Australia, and it also looked at some issues in teaching IT and IS to international students in the context of GIT and GIS based on the fact that different students from different countries have different IT and IS backgrounds. This chapter also made a daring prediction for the impact of GIT and GIS in Australia, and proposed a few viable strategies for resolving some issues facing international education for IT and IS in Australia. The proposed approach is very useful for GIT, GIS, and the university IT/IS training worldwide. It is obvious that students from developed nations rarely enroll in universities of developing countries, except some special disciplines such as languages. However, the trend cannot be changed significantly in the near future. The students from the developing countries will receive increasing benefits from IT and IS, with the development of the Internet, GIT, and GIS. Australian universities will significantly contribute to the progress of GIT and GIS in Australasia and Asia through education export. Finally, the future research directions and opportunities in related areas were briefly discussed. The results presented in previous discussions suggest a number of topics for future research. In

Table 2. Ten principal sources of international students in Australia, 2004* (DEST, 2005) Country of Permanent Home Residence

% Increase Compared with 2002

China (excludes Hong Kong and Taiwan)

37,106

89.3

Malaysia

28,862

21.6

Singapore

28,290

-5.6

Hong Kong

27,461

1.8

India

16,320

94.5

Indonesia

11,316

-0.6

United States

9,522

14.3

Thailand

5,824

12.0

Taiwan

4,533

14.0

Japan

4,409

N/A

* Includes only public funded universities

16

Total Persons


what follows, I only describe three topics for future research, owing to space limitation. One of the topics for future research is to examine major theoretical or conceptual frameworks in information systems education in Australian universities. The research into this topic will help better understanding of GIT and GIS in Australian universities’ education. It can also help examine the interrelationship between theory and practice mentioned in an earlier section. Another topic for future research is the impact of development of higher education of China on IT and IS programs offered in Australian universities. We have mentioned this issue in this chapter. In fact, the development of mass higher degree (master’s and PhD) education in China will have a significant influence on the IT and IS programs offered in Australian universities. One possible consequence is that the number of Chinese students that enroll the IT and IS postgraduate programs offered by Australian universities will be further decreasing, which will make the infrastructure of IT and IS in Australian universities shrink. Because of weak development of the manufacturing sector related to IT and IS in Australia, IT and IS programs will face a critical challenge in Australian universities in the near future. One possible chance is that Australian universities should accelerate the educational cooperation in the area of higher degree education cooperation with their counterparts in China, although the advances in this area are very slow at the moment. The third topic for future research is to look at the contributions of Australian universities to GIT and GIS. This chapter focuses on the impact of GIT and GIS on IT and IS programs offered in Australian universities. In fact, Australian universities have also made huge contributions to GIT and GIS through international cooperation in research and teaching. Therefore, it is significant to examine how Australian universities themselves contribute to GIT and GIS worldwide.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author thanks Professor Ann Hodgkinson of the University of Wollongong, Australia, Professor

Gavin Finnie of Bond University, Australia, and Professor Jianqiang Li of Hebei Normal University, China, for their encouragement and support during the progress of this chapter.

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CC. (2005, April 11). Joint Task Force of ACM, AIS and IEEE-CS education draft. Retrieved October 20, 2006, from http://www.acm.org/education/Draft_523-051.pdf Creaders. (n.d.). Immigration. Retrieved October 21, 2006, from http://news.creaders.net/immigration/newsViewer.php?id=685508 DEST (Department of Education, Science and Training). (2005). Higher education sector in Australia. Retrieved October 19, 2006, from http:// www.dest.gov.au/sectors/higher_education/default. htm#Higher_Education_Report_2004-05 EDNA. (n.d.). Homepage. Retrieved October 16, 2006, from http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/browse/0,5390 Furbach, U. (2003). AI-A multiple book review. Artificial Intelligence, 145, 245-252. IHE (Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University). (2006). Academic ranking of world universities 2006. Retrieved October 18, 2006, from http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm Harman, G. (2002, September 5-7). Australia as a major higher education exporter. Proceedings of the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers 15th Annual Conference, Vienna, Austria. Retrieved October 25, 2006, from http://www.iff.ac.at/hofo/ CHER_2002/pdf/ch02harm.pdf Lukic, T., Broadbent, A., & Maclachlan, M. (2004). International higher education students: How do they differ from other higher education students? Retrieved October 16, 2006, from http://www.dest. gov.au/ NR/rdonlyres/CB05180A-CC58-44EC9DAF-A32CF84C06B1/1176/2.pdf Marakas, G.M. (2002). Decision support systems (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Marginson, S. (2004). National and global competition in higher education. The Australian Educational Researcher, 31(2), 1-27. Retrieved October 16, 2006, from http://www.aare.edu.au/aer/online/40020b.pdf Manheim, M.L. (1992). Global information technology: Issues and strategic opportunities. International Information Systems, 1(1), 38-67.

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Nelson, B. (2002). Higher education: Report for the 2003 to 2005 triennium. Retrieved October 19, 2006, from http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/ higher_education/publications_resources/profiles/default.htm Palvia, P.C. (1997). Developing a model of the global and strategic impact of information technology. Information & Management, 32(5), 229-244. Palvia P.C., Jain Palvia, S.C., & Whitworth, J.E. (2002). Global information technology: A meta analysis of key issues. Information & Management, 39(5), 403-414. Satzinger, J.W., Jackson, R.B., & Burd, S.D. (2004). Systems analysis and design in a changing world (3rd ed.). Thompson Learning. Sun, Z. (2004, July 8). IS: An individual perspective. Seminar Presentation, School of Economics and Information Systems, University of Wollongong, Australia. Sun, Z., & Finnie, G. (2004). Intelligent techniques in e-commerce: A case-based reasoning perspective. Heidelberg/Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Sun, Z., & Finnie, G. (2005). A unified logical model for CBR-based e-commerce systems. International Journal of Intelligent Systems, 20(1), 29-26. Sun, Z., Finnie, G., & Weber, K. (2004). Case base building with similarity relations. Information Sciences: An International Journal, 165(1-2), 21-43. Sun, Z., Finnie, G., & Weber, K. (2005). Abductive case based reasoning. International Journal of Intelligent Systems, 20(9), 957-983. UTAS. (n.d.). IS departments. Retrieved October 16, 2006, from http://www.utas.edu.au/infosys/cgi/ is_depts/ (page no longer available).

ADDITIONAL READING Adelsberger, H.H., Collis, B., & Pawlowski, J.M. (Eds.). (2005). Handbook on information


technologies for education and training. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Avgerou, C. (2002). Information systems and global diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Desai, M.S., Desai, K.J., & Ojode, L. (2004). A global information technology model: Business applications in developing economies (case studies). Information Management & Computer Security, 12(5), 401–410. Espinosa, J.A., DeLone, W., & Lee, G. (2006). Global boundaries, task processes and IS project success: A field study. Information Technology & People, 19(4), 345-370. GlobIS: Global Information Systems Group. (n.d.). http://www.globis.ethz.ch/education/mpis Hernandez, M.G., Equiza-Lopez, F., & AcevedoRuiz, M. (2006). Information communication technologies and human development: Opportunities and challenges. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Hunter, M.G., & Tan, F.B. (2005). Advanced topics in global information management. Hershey, PA: Idea Group. Ives, B., & Jarvenpaa, S.L. (1991). Applications of global information technology: Key issues for management. MIS Quarterly, 15(1), 33-49. Jones, C., Rathi, D., Twidale, M., & Li, W. (n.d.). One system, worldwide: Challenges to global information systems. Retrieved April 16, 2007, from http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~twidale/pubs/one_system_worldwide.pdf Khosrow-Pour, M., & Loch, K. (1993). Global information technology education: Issues and trends. Hershey, PA: Idea Group. Kurihara, Y., Takaya, S., & Yamori, N. (2006). Global information technology and competitive financial alliances. Hershey, PA: Idea Group. Lacity, M.C., Willcocks, L.P., Lacity, M.C., & Willcocks, L. (2001). Global information technology outsourcing: In search of business advantage. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Mena, E., & Illarramendi, A. (2001). Ontologybased query processing for global information systems. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Palvia, P., Palvia, S., & Roche, E.M. (Eds.). (2001). Global information technology and electronic commerce. Ivy League. Palvia P.C., Palvia, S.C.J., & Whitworth, J.E. (2002). Global information technology: A meta analysis of key issues. Information & Management, 39(5), 403-414. Palvia, P., Mao, E., Salam, A.F., & Soliman, K.S. (2003). Management information systems research: What’s there in a methodology? Communications of AIS, 11(16), 1-33. Peppard, J. (1999). Information management in the global enterprise: An organising framework. European Journal of Information Systems, 8(2), 77-94. Raisinghani, M.S. (2001). Book review: Global information technology and electronic commerce: Issues for the new millennium. Journal of Global Information Technology Management, 4(4), 58-60. Schneider, G. (2006). Electronic commerce (6th ed.). Australia: Thomson Course Technology. Silberglitt, R., Anton, P.S. et al. (2005). The global technology revolution 2020, in-depth analyses: Bio/nano/materials/information trends, drivers, barriers, and social implications. Retrieved April 18, 2007, from http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR303/ Smith, M.M. (2002, August 18-24). Global information ethics: A mandate for professional education. Proceedings of the 68th IFLA Council and General Conference. Retrieved April 18, 2007, from http:// www.ifla.org/IV/ifla68/papers/056-093e.pdf Sun, Z., & Lau, S.K. (2006). Customer experience management in e-services. In J. Lu, D. Ruan, & G. Zhang (Eds.), E-service intelligence: Methodologies, technologies and applications (pp. 365-388). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer Verlag.

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Stair, R., & Reynolds, G. (2006). Fundamentals of information systems (3rd ed.). Thomson Course Technology. Tan, F.B. (Ed.). (2002). Global perspective of information technology management. Hershey, PA: IRM Press.

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Weforum. (n.d.). Global information technology report. Retrieved April 18, 2007, from http://www. weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Inform ation%20Technology%20Report/index.htm