Marketing IT/IS to Students
Approaches to Promoting IT Careers and Programs¶
"Harnessing" current student insight, innovation, and talent¶
Over the course of three semesters, SIUE Professor Jo Ellen Moore charged her CMIS 470 capstone course students to: 1) find out why more students are not MIS majors; 2) design, develop, and implement a new Web site to help with recruiting students; and 3) produce a video about MIS for the "I M IT"” AIS Information Systems Video Competition. Check out the results at:
http://www.siue.edu/business/cmis/wac/. If you or your university subscribe to the ACM Digital Library, an experience paper is included in the proceedings of the ACM SIGMIS Conference on Computer Personnel Research 2009, Limerick, Ireland, May 28 - 30, 2009. Search by authors (Moore, Schoenecker, and Yager) or title ("Harnessing IT Student Insight and Energy to Understand and Address the IT Enrollment Issue").
Educating secondary school teachers and counselors¶
Secondary school computer teachers and counselors may not be aware of the current high demand for IT workers and thus may steer students away from IT majors. Educating these individuals may help IT majors become more attractive to incoming college students.
SIM (Society for Information Management) in concert with Microsoft and IBM facilitates excellent sessions for universities that are members of SIM. Frequently multiple universities from the same geographic area collaborate on these programs. In addition to holding a program for advisor's and High School teachers, they have held
essay sessions for High School Seniors and incoming University Freshman and their parents.
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National Center for Women & Information Technology offers some really great resources for outreach:
http://www.ncwit.org/resources.res.outreach.html
These materials are easy to use for giving presentations to high-school students, teachers and parents.
Statistics to bolster arguments for the major
A new study discusses the skills gap in the world's IT workforce then provides statistics on hiring world wide:
Skills Gaphttp://RapidRequest.emediausa.com/2/2.aspx?110486.CHEUXRET.13086 . Thanks to Bill Hefley at Carnegie Mellon for this tip.
National Center for Women & Information Technology provides talking points, statistics and other useful information for promoting the field of IT:
http://www.ncwit.org/resources.res.outreach.htmlMaking the Intro to IS course more engaging
For many students, the core IS course is the first exposure to IS as a potential career. Making this course more engaging may help attract students to IS. Also, having the best, most personable instructors teach the intro course may pay dividends.
There is empirical evidence that increasing the quality of the introductory course helps stimulate interest in IS through a variety of mechanisms. See Looney, C. and Akbulut, A. (2007). Combating the IS enrollment crisis: The role of effective teachers in introductory IS courses, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 19, 781-805.
An important topic that should be included in this course is a good description of the different types of jobs and careers that exist, as well as the diference in the focus of an IS Degree from a CS Degree.
If you have a website for the Intro to IS course, feature job RSS feeds on the website as a way to dynamically illustrate the range of job opportunities that interest your students. Major job portals such as Monster.com offer live RSS feeds for job postings, but these feeds are not customizable.
http://jobsearch.monster.com/rss.aspx silver barSome job portals are starting to offer customizable job feeds. For example, Indeed.com allows you to save a job search as a customized RSS feed:
http://www.indeed.com/q-RSS-feeds-jobs.html
This allows you to feature job postings within your city, in a particular industry (e.g., IT in healthcare), etc.
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Coordinated, multi-method promotional campaigns may be effective
The University of Georgia found great success with mult-phase promotional campaign. Their plan including developing and distributing marketing materials, contacting employers and alumni for assistance, holding social events for prospective students, advertisements on campus busses and press articles.
Event-based Marketing and Promotion¶
Several universities have been successful in using large events to promote IT careers and programs. These are typically aimed at informing students regarding the nature of IT careers, and dispelling misconceptions regarding the IT job market.
Successful recent programs include:
Baylor University's Information Systems Summit
Overview:
Overview of Baylor's Summithttp://www.baylor.edu/business/news.php?action=story&story=45044
Event Web site:
Baylor's event web sitehttp://aitp.baylor.edu/issummit/
The event is also described in: Koch, H. and Kayworth, T. "Using Information Systems Theory to Increase IS Enrollment," Proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), Keystone, Colorado, August 2007
Oklahoma State University
1. class at the local high school in Stillwater.
Dr. David Biros, assistant professor in the management sciences and information systems department at OSU, has started an Innovative Technologies course with Jason Webber, Web design and math teacher at SHS. Plans are to roll this out to other schools in the future.
See an article in the Stillwater NewsPress (http://www.stillwater-newspress.com/local/local_story_046105402.html)
2. Professors Ramesh Sharda, Regents Professor of MSIS, Prof. Nikunj Dalal who is based in Bangalore this year, and Mark Weiser, Associate Dean of Spears School of Business conducted information sessions about the MIS program at selected high schools in Bangalore and Hyderabad on January 22-26, 2008. See details at: (http://spears.okstate.edu/msis/india/)
Workshop for Women in IT - Emerging Leaders
This event, organized by faculty from Claremont Graduate School, Claremont McKenna College and Saint Louis University, was directed at female high school students. More details are available at:
Claremont Workshop for Women in IThttp://ncl.cgu.edu/desrist2007/Women.htm
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Future Potential in IT - SIM, Microsoft and IBM
This is a series of conferences directed at promoting IT careers. SIM, Microsoft and IBM partner with educational institutions to organize events at a variety of locations.
Overview:
Future Potential conferenceshttp://www.futurepotentialit.com/
YouTube video:
YouTube Video - Future Potential in IThttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so1zVwHWfzo
Social Media WritingPublications related to student marketingSnippet from Dick et al. (2007)Recent Exchanges on AISWorld
In response to a request from Keng Siau of University of Nebraska at Lincoln, the following set of resources was obtained. As they cut across several of these categories, we are hoping to have the contributors provide their resources in where applicable. After some period of time, we might reorganize and insert some ourselves.
See the exchange at
Keng Siau's AISWorld summaryhttp://www.ait.unl.edu/siau/marketing-mis/main.htm
Another thread on AIS
World included the following tidbits:
From Bill Hefley: Article: Information Resources Management Journal (IRMJ) Official Publication of the Information Resources Management Association Volume 21, Issue 3, July-September 2008; "Perception Gaps about Skills Requirement for Entry-Level IS Professionals between Recruiters and Students: An Exploratory Study," by Sooun Lee, Miami University, USA and Xiang Fang, Miami University, USA.
Abstract: This article discusses how the dramatic changes in the U.S. economic situations and offshore outsourcing trends in the IT (Information Technology). The industry have affected the IS (Information Systems) job market and recruiters with regard to IS knowledge/skills that their new hires should possess. Keeping pace with these changes presents a challenge for IS recruiters and students. There is an urgent need for a study that investigates the perception gaps between IS recruiters and students about the knowledge/skill sets required for a new entry-level IS hire. This study reports the findings from a survey of IS recruiters and IS students in the U.S., detailing the differences of their understanding about the knowledge/skills requirement.
logo designTo obtain a copy of the entire article, click on this link:
IRMJ articlehttp://www.igi-global.com/articles/details.asp?id=7972
Rick Watson provided a summary of his Bumper Sticker thread from AIS World in 2006. The summary is available
here.
Roy Schmidt provided the following: The demand for IS professionals is real enough. We now hear reports that companies are beginning to feel real pain from the shortage of qualified IS people (for example,
CIO Magazine Reportwww.cio.com/article/183702/Not_Enough_IT_Workers_On_Staff_Survey_Finds).
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