Jean A. Pratt

Factors Influencing Students’ Major and Career Selection in Systems Development: An Empirical Study

ABSTRACT Systems development is an academic major in many information systems (IS) programs. Attracting students who are interested in systems development is important to increasing IS enrollment. The purpose of this study aims to empirically investigate which factors influence students’ decisions to select systems development as a major and future career. This research makes three contributions to IS research and education. First, the research findings extend previous research associating outcome expectations and job availability with attitudes toward systems development. IS educators can use these findings to create better recruiting strategies and to improve the IS curriculum. Second, the findings connect academic-major choice with career choice. The findings indicate that attitudes toward systems development and personal innovativeness in IT (PIIT) positively influence students’ intentions to pursue a career as a systems developer. Third, this research paves a foundation for further investigation into systems development behavior and performance in the workplace.

The influence of goal clarity, curiosity, and enjoyment on intention to code

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of goal clarity, curiosity, and enjoyment – dimensions of flow theory – on the intention to write programming code. This research refines and extends previous information systems (IS) research in two significant ways: first, this research is focused specifically on systems development behaviour; second; this is the first research that isolates specific flow theory constructs associated with systems development behaviour. We used SmartPLS to test our model, as partial least squares is the appropriate statistical methodology for theory building and model testing. Findings are based on survey data from computer IS classes at two different universities. Goal clarity and curiosity independently and significantly contributed to enjoyment when programming, which significantly and positively influenced a future intention to code. Recommendations for practitioners and faculty include testing for curiosity characteristics, providing clear goals, and providing stimuli to pique curiosity.