Using Indices of Student Satisfaction to Assess an MIS Program

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate a methodology by which management information systems (MIS) alumni evaluations of the content of courses and their satisfaction with an entire MIS program can be used to assess the relevancy of an MIS curriculum. By way of clarification, an MIS program prepares its graduates to be effective in the tasks necessary to design, program, and implement systems that will provide management with timely, accurate, and useful information for decision making. This is in contrast to computer science (CS) programs that prepare their graduates to be knowledgeable in the technical aspects of computer hardware and operating systems software. This study first determines if there were any differences in the evaluations of the content of required MIS courses by alumni based on whether the graduate was using the first year on the job or in one’s current position as a frame of reference. Then a factor analysis is performed, using the scores earned by specific courses, to reduce the content value of specific courses into specific factors, thus simplifying understanding of the type of learning that is taking place. A factor analysis is performed both for course content scores during one’s first year on the job and again in one’s current position. Using a global measure of satisfaction with the entire MIS program, the course content factor scores then are correlated to a student’s satisfaction with the entire MIS program. This regression analysis is performed once again for both one’s first year on the job and in one’s current position. The implications for evaluating the effectiveness of an MIS curriculum are presented and discussed.