The attached Mission, Outcomes, and Assessment document outlines the curricular focus for the MIS program as well as the assessment tools that will help us determine if our curricular goals are being met. The MIS Department Goals document (also attached) describes the goals of the department which include the delivery of the MIS curriculum but also describe related teaching, research, and service goals for the department in the broader context of the College of Business and Ohio University as a whole. Both of these documents were developed by the faculty in the MIS Department.

The most important indicator of the success of the MIS program has always been related to the ability to successfully place graduates in MIS positions in top companies. The most critical assessment has therefore focused on information related to the placement of graduates and information faculty obtain through direct contact with employers.

The assessment measures for the overall program and the curriculum are in place or currently being developed. Feedback from graduates and data on the placement of graduates is already being collected through various surveys conducted by Institutional Research. Recent results from these surveys so a high degree of satisfaction among graduates with the College of Business and the training they received in MIS. Placement rates of graduates remain high and faculty have worked hard at establishing good relationship with employers that hire our graduates. Feedback from employers has historically been used to shape the MIS program and we are currently working at establishing a formal advisory council that will meet next fall. In addition, a student advisory group has been used to provide feedback from students currently in the program to the department on the quality of the program. Also starting in fall, the department will phase in a student portfolio requirement that will further document student learning within the MIS program.

The MIS department has been continually reshaped since its existence through feedback from employers and changes in technology. During its original creation, the MIS curriculum was developed in consultation with Digital Equipment Corporation and Cincom Systems. These relationships lead directly to courses in database design and programming. Further developments occurred in the late 1980s through continued consultation with Digital and Xerox which led to the addition of courses in networking and office automation. In 1990, the major went through a major transition from a two-track major to the single track major in existence today which emphasizes higher level languages and systems analysis. More recently, contacts with consulting companies have prompted the addition of a course in Lotus Notes to the curriculum.

As reported last year two of the seven required MIS courses will be completely redone to shift to an emphasis on client-server computing. The MIS225 course has been successfully redesigned to use Visual Basic and the MIS380 class is currently being redesigned to include Oracle for the Fall

Faculty in the department have devoted an enormous amount of time developing contacts with key employers that have historically hired MIS graduates. Those contact provide the department with assessments of student preparation and the faculty have responded changes to the program. Examples of these changes are described above.

The department is already planning additional curricular changes based on feedback received by employers and developments in the computer industry in general. The next area for change will be in the redesign of the two-course systems design sequence. These courses will be changed to take advantage of the redesign of MIS225 and MIS380 and will be shifted to include new design tools and some emphasis of object-oriented modeling. In addition, a personal computer focus is still planned as a subset of the MIS program that will serve both MIS majors and other students desiring advanced experience with microcomputers once we have enough staff to offer the courses.

• The MIS department plans to work on additional questions to be added to the graduate surveys targeted at assessing the specific outcomes for the MIS program.

• The student portfolio requirement will begin in the fall to assess the achievement of curricular outcomes.

• A formalized advisory council will be created to organize the current contacts with employers used by the program for advice

• A formalized survey of employer satisfaction will be developed to get more direct information on the strengths and weaknesses of MIS graduates.

• More detailed curricular outcomes will be developed at the individual course level along with assessment measures to determine if those outcomes are being achieved.

• The MIS web page will be used to give alumni and employers areas for feedback.