T. Grandon Gill

Early expert systems: where are they now?

Expert systems (ES) were among the earliest branches of artificial intelligence (AI) to be commercialized. But how successful have they actually been? Many well-publicized applications have proven to be pure hype, numerous AI vendors have failed or been completely reorganized, major companies have reduced or eliminated their commitment to expert systems, and even Wall Street has become disillusioned -- a predicted

Expert systems usage: task change and intrinsic motivation

4 billion market proving to be smaller by an order of magnitude. Yet, in spite of these setbacks, there are many companies who remain enthusiastic proponents of the technology, and continue to develop important ES applications.The paper describes an investigation exploring how the first wave of commercial expert systems, built during the early and mid-1980s, fared over time. An important subset of these systems, identified in a catalog of commercial applications compiled in 1987, was located through a telephone survey, and detailed information on each systems was gathered. The data collected show that most of these systems fell into disuse or were abandoned during a five-year period from 1987 to 1992, while about a third continued to thrive. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data further suggested that the short-lived nature of many systems was not attributable to failure to meet technical performance or economic objectives. Instead, managerial issues such as lack of system acceptance by users, inability to retain developers, problems in transitioning from development to maintenance, and shifts in organizational priorities, appeared to be the most significant factors resulting in long term systems disuse.

IS Faculty Research Productivity: Influential Factors and Implications

What motivates use of an expert system? Recent studies have found that the anticipated performance benefits of using an expert system -- such as increases in decision quality, consistency, and speed of decision making -- can lead to increases in expected usage. But is motivation limited to performance benefits? Findings in job design theory suggest that other factors -- such as increasing a users sense of control over a task or making a task less routine -- might also have an impact. If so, understanding these factors could be extremely valuable to managers seeking to build expert systems that will be readily accepted by users. This paper synthesizes findings from expert systems, information systems, and job design research to model how the task change experienced by an expert systems user during adoption can affect that users motivation to continue using the system. Using existing task constructs from the job design literature, a simplified version of the model is operationalized and tested on a data set of expert systems (all constructed in the early and mid-1980s) for which extensive quantitative and qualitative task change data was available, as well as data on systems usage. The findings suggest significant relationships between the nature of the task changes associated with adoption and long-term usage of the systems, all consistent with the predictions of the job design literature. The study, therefore, concludes that a job design perspective of expert systems adoption can be a valuable tool in predicting user acceptance and, ultimately, systems usage.

The Evolving Undergraduate Information Systems Education: A Survey of U.S. Institutions

Why are some faculty members more productive than others in academic research? We constructed a number of hypotheses about faculty research productivity based on the life-cycle model of academic research and previous studies. Tests were conducted using data collected via a national survey of information systems IS faculty. The results show that while there are only two significant factors contributing positively to the research productivity-the time allocated to research activity and the existence of IS doctoral programs-many other factors appear to have significant adverse effect on research productivity, such as the number of years on faculty, the teaching load when exceeding 11 hours weekly, and non-IS, non-academic employment experience. The results also suggest that some of the commonly proposed influential factors, such as tenure status, academic rank, school type, as well as IS-related employment experience, have no significant effect at all. The implications of these findings and the limitations of the study are also discussed.

Information Systems Education in the USA

Abstract To keep up with the fast-changing world of information technologies (IT), information systems (IS) education programs need to be assessed regularly in terms of curriculum and teaching methods. This article reports the results of a survey of 240 faculty members in its undergraduate programs representing 193 higher education institutions in the United States. Analyses of the data suggest that during the period 1991-1996 these programs have undergone dramatic changes to include coverage of the Internet, networking, and client/server-related topics. Meanwhile, traditional IS courses in such areas as mainframe operating systems, COBOL programming, and decision support systems have declined in importance. The information provided in this article should be valuable to IS educators and curriculum designers and could aid practitioners in their understanding of IS graduates. It also sheds some light on the future of IS education programs.

WEBPISTON: CHOOSING A NEW STRATEGY

Fast changing information technology (IT) has posed tremendous challenges to information systems (IS) educational programmes. One question frequently asked by IS educators has been: ‘Are we doing the right thing?’ This article presents information about the current state of IS educational programmes in the USA based on a survey of 193 higher education institutions conducted at the end of 1996. The results indicate that IS educational programmes are prevalent in the higher educational institutions. These programmes have a highly qualified faculty: 92% or more holding terminal degrees, more than two-thirds having tenure, with evidence of an increasing amount of time being devoted to research activities. It is also found that the most popular programming languages taught in both graduate and undergraduate programmes are C/C++, SQL and COBOL, and dominant operating systems are Windows/OS2 and UNIX. The most profound change over the last five years in the content of IS programmes has been the transition from text-based and centralized mainframe environment to the graphical and decentralized network based client–server architecture. This survey provides a snapshot of IS programmes, serving both to improve our understanding of current programmes and to provide a frame of reference for future studies.

High-tech hidebound: Case studies of information technologies that inhibited organizational learning

Web Piston is a successful enterprise that provides its small business and individual clients with automated web design and web hosting services. Owing to the rapidly changing competitive environment, however, the company’s founder, Ricardo Lasa, feels that a change in strategy is necessary. The case describes the competitive environment for web hosting and outlines four alternative strategies: 1) becoming a “freemium” player, 2) becoming a custom web site developer, 3) creating a marketplace to match web clients and developers, and 4) focusing on developing portals for deployment on social networking sites. The principal objective of the case is to provide a rationale for making the decision, or to offer an alternative strategy. A teaching note may be obtained from Dr. T. Grandon Gill (grandon@usf.edu). The case is almost entirely undisguised and was specifically intended to focus on building judgment/evaluation skills in the presence of considerable uncertainty.