IMPAC Statewide meeting 2006 Page 1 of 5
CIS Discipline Notes
IMPAC Statewide Meeting
May 6, 2006
CIS Discipline Meeting Notes
Present: Dennie Von Tassel, Gavilan College; Diane Mayne-Stafford, Grossmont College; Dennis
Mohle, Fresno City College; Philip Barnhart, Mount San Antonio College; Mary Johnson, Mount
San Antonio College; Brett Miketta, Glendale College; Mary Mills, Moorpark College; Annette
Easton, San Diego State University; MaryAnn Watson, Orange Coast College; Patricia Sullivan,
Saddleback College; Gerry Jenkins, Long Beach City College; Mar- Sue Ratzke, Rio Hondo Colleges,
Sophie Lee, CSU Long Beach; Robert Chi, CSU Long Beach; Barbara Saxon, San Bernardino Valley
College; John Ittelson,CSU Monterey Bay
Review notes from last years meetings and agree on today’s agenda
Diane reviewed the CIS discipline work to date. See the meeting notes for 2004-2005 for details. The
agenda was changed to remove the possibility of meeting with other disciplines, because there is not
time to work with other groups at this session of IMPAC.
Review of progress towards LDTP
Annette explained that she had sent an abbreviated outline of CAN6 to the LDTP business group
because the SDSU representative wanted it in the same format as outlines from other disciplines. The
abbreviated format is designed to allow for future content changes. The LDTP committee removed
the requirement for systems analysis, effectively downgrading the required problem solving skills See
the attached outline. At present 14 out of 23 CSU campuses have voted to accept this version.
If 75% of the CSU’s vote to accept this version, then all campuses will be required to accept this class
for transfer. Because the class may no longer have IS in it some CSU Campuses may consider
moving this class to the upper division so that they are not required to accept it for transfer. There is
also an enrollment issue that is making this change attractive to some CSU campuses where
enrollment is down. The LDTP process is not yet finalized; here is not yet a mechanism for updating
courses. The current articulation is good for 2 years from Fall 2006.
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CIS Discipline Notes
Current State and Future of CAN6
Diane described her email from Larry Hitterdale at Glendale CC explaining their need to update and
upgrade this course. The group agreed that this course needs to be updated frequently to include
problem solving skills and to be made more relevant to CIS today.
Brett explained more about the changes at Glendale CC. They are upgrading their 101
class by placing more emphasis on:
1. Digital image and media processing with expanded coverage of the Digital
Representation of Data topic.
2. The Web as a research tool to master the basics of information competency across the
curriculum.
3. Project based research and writing activities that demonstrate higher-level application
integration skills.
They are also adding some other relevant topics such as GIS and expanded coverage of
open source operating systems and applications.
After some discussion about offering two versions of the course, it looks like Glendale
will offer one version of the course that will conform to the LDTP version of the CAN6,
but include the systems analysis material within the 20% of undefined content to
maintain articulation beyond the next two years.
Some colleges are teaching Word, but only to the level of skills that allow students to write a research
paper and publish it on the web. This is working because the students think this is relevant. Building
learning communities and collaborations across campus are helping with enrollment and success.
John stressed the importance of data security and believes that it should be introduced much earlier
than in the current texts. Gary mentioned that the University of Hawaii is doing podcasts on security
including practical projects.
There was general agreement on the need for database skills. Glendale is applying database concepts
to projects. CSU Long Beach is looking in Access and Excel for evidence of problem solving skills
when they do articulation. They pointed out that often, not all the paperwork gets to the department
when a community college is trying to articulate a course. Personal contact would help with this
problem. Some institutions are doing a good job of working together. CSU Long Beach and Long
Beach CC have a grant that is enabling them to work closely together.
There was a lot of interest expressed which text book is used in the CAN6 course. Most of the
participants felt that the textbook is a very important factor in the success of the class, but there is no
perfect text. Long Beach is doing some of their own content because so many students are not buying
their own book.
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CIS Discipline Notes
Gary raised the issue of bloating the course with required topics that are over and above the transfer
LDTP requirements. Annette pointed out that there is no agreement across the CSU system on
necessary requirements, making things even more difficult. She felt that this should be a service
course for all business students, but that there is a problem in making it appealing and at the same time
including the necessary IS skills. No one wanted to spend much time on basic hardware and software
details.
Brett summed up what he felt he wanted to do with his program on his return to Glendale.
1. Identify critical pathways of courses and articulate them
2. Integrate the skills and topics in the CAN6 course with the rest of the curriculum and the
state information literacy requirement
3. Internally in the course, excite the students and interest them into enrolling in other
courses in the department.
Testing Out of CAN6
Anecdotal evidence suggests that it is not possible to have an effective test-out for CAN6. Several
institution offer the final exam as a test-out, but the students do not pass. Some campuses are required
to develop and offer a test-out, but they reported that NO student had ever passed. Annette cautioned
that the Information and Communications Technology literacy assessment (ICT) test that is being
developed by ETS (Educational Testing Services) is not at the level of CAN6, but is more of an
information literacy test of the sort that are being offered by library sciences. IF does not have any of
the critical thinking required by BUS6.
Issues associated with Vista, Office 2007 and other Microsoft products
And
Use of open source software
The difficulties of moving to the new Microsoft operating system were discussed. The old (XP) and
new (Vista) systems are very different interfaces and so using both simultaneously would be very
difficult. Some people believe that Microsoft will soon stop supporting XP so the move should be
made early, while others felt that businesses will stay on XP, so that will continue to be what our
students need to know.
There was general agreement that there needs to be at least 1 year after introduction of a new system
before it should be adopted so that the initial bugs are worked out. At the point where a new system
must be installed, some colleges and campuses will choose to move to open-source software since
more businesses and even whole countries (Brazil) are now using it. Group members felt that open-
source is acceptable because it is the concepts and skills of IS that are important, and the emphasis of
our instruction should be on teaching problem-solving skills rather than the keystrokes of a Microsoft
application.
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CIS Discipline Notes
General Ed CIS class
Several campuses have the CAN6 as a GE class, qualifying in the Critical Thinking area and Fresno
College has a 3 unit literacy course that is a graduation requirement. Some colleges have a
programming course that qualifies for critical thinking.
There was a general agreement that computer literacy should be a general education graduation
requirement and if possible that course should be the CAN6. Those colleges where this is the case
have stronger enrollments.
Teaching beginning programming - the Alice programming system
There is a trend to using the new Alice programming language in the introduction to programming
classes. Alice is a graphical interface that allows students to program objects and begin to understand
the basic concepts of OOP. See http://www.alice.org for details. Those present who had had
exposure to Alice believed that it could be used to give experience in problem solving and if used in
CAN6, could excite students to want to move into IS.
Transfer issues for online classes
There was general agreement that online classes are filling before traditional classes and they offer an
opportunity for non-traditional students to attend class. However retention is a problem and the
various colleges are offering different options to improve enrollment and retention including
compressed schedules, follow-on eight week classes, winter sessions (do well) and late-start classes
(do well). Hybrid classes are working. They are offered in various formats. In some cases they still
have the same number of weeks as the regular on-campus classes, but with fewer hours on campus,
while in others the number of weeks is reduced. There was no definitive conclusion on which way is
best. Concerns were raised because students can be confused between online and hybrid classes, not
knowing that they do need to come on campus for hybrids. Sometimes the hybrids are marked as
“online”, because the state is changing the definition of online to “if any seat time is being replaced”.
Enrollment
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CIS Discipline Notes
The participants felt that enrollments are stabilizing, but that the lower enrollments overall are having
an effect on how the CSU’s offer classes (moving classes from transfer level to upper division) and
that courses offered need to be more relevant to current students.
The meeting concluded at 3:30 p.m. with a general agreement that the CIS group would like IMPAC
to continue in the future and that these discussions are very valuable to all participants. This
particularly applies to the CIS discipline where the technology is changing so quickly.
This group wanted to keep the communication going for next year and wants to develop some sort of
list serve (see http://www.listserve.com )or wiki (see http://www.wiki.org) for the CIS discipline.
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