Education

One of my assignments in my Knowledge Management Class had me read and review am article using PowerPoint. I’ve just submitted the assignment and wanted to provide a link to my readers to take a look at the presentation and provide some feedback.

The article reviewed is:

• Slaughter, S. A., & Kirsch, L. J. (2006). The Effectiveness of Knowledge Transfer Portfolios in Software Process Improvement: A Field Study. Information Systems Research, 17(3), 301.

It’s an interesting article with some interesting results but I’m going to make you watch/listen to my presentation to hear more about it
This is my first presentation using PowerPoint and recorded narration and I’m anxious to hear some feedback. Due to the assignment, the presentation is about 30 minutes long and is probably very boring if you aren’t interested in Knowledge Transfer. Even if you are interested in KM, it may be boring too!
Please drop me a message or leave me a comment about the presentation and/or ideas for how I could improve it.

Presentation with Narration:
http://ericbrownmedia.com/infs834/articlereview/start.html
*The presentation was converted from PowerPoint into Flash using a product called Pointecast.

PowerPoint Presentation without Narration:
http://ericbrownmedia.com/infs834/ArticleReview-slides.ppt

I’ve just completed my first semester of my doctoral program and I’m ready for a break.

I took 2 courses this semester worth 6 hours. The courses are:

• Introduction to Research (INFS 614) -  This course was a bear.  I did more research and writing in this course than I’ve done in the last 5 years I think.   I’m glad this course was required as it made me sit back and really think about research, research methodologies and Information Systems.
• Systems Analysis and Design using CASE Tools (INFS 720) - This course was your normal graduate level IS course but was very informative.  I’ve never taken an IS Systems Analysis course and did enjoy this one for the most part.

Time to take a few weeks off….Spring semester starts in exactly one month (Jan 16).  I’ll be taking two courses (6 hours) in the Spring: Project & Change Management (INFS 724) and Knowledge Management (INFS 834).  I’m really looking forward to the Knowledge Management course as it should cover a lot of really interesting material.   Look for another post in January once the semester starts.

Technorati Tags: Doctorate, Dakota State, D.Sc.

Starting September 5, 2007, I will be a student in the Doctor of Science in Information Systems program at Dakota State.

The school is one of the very very few non-profit, regionally accredited universities in the country that offers a doctoral program in information systems via an external (or distance learning) program. The DSU D.Sc. program is still fairly new with only about 15 students and the faculty seem very good and very experienced.

The program looks very interesting and very thorough and my specialization will be Decision Support, Knowledge Management and Data Management Systems (DSS for short) although I have no real idea what my research and dissertation topic will be yet.

If everything goes according to plan, I will be done sometime in 2010 or 2011 if everything goes according to plan. Yikes…another 3 to 4 years of school.

Why do I want a doctorate? Personal satisfaction is the biggest reason and the only one that will really drive me to finish but I also have an interest in the process of earning a doctorate. The research, writing and pure critical thinking that is utilized during the doctorate program is something that I’m very interested in and can’t wait to get into. Ask me in six months and I may say that those things don’t really interest me as much.
A by-product of the journey to my doctorate will be the my improved research and writing abilities as well as my knowledge in the field of Information Systems. I hope to be able to leverage this knowledge and experience into an interesting consulting career down the road.

If anyone out there has an interest in the non-traditional education methods (e.g., external research, distance learning, etc) then you should read the page that I created titled “Education“. This page has a brief outline of my journey over the last 1.5 years to find a doctoral program that works for me as well as a good description of why I didn’t choose some of the other programs out there.. There are a lot of programs out there, but few that focus on IT & Technology, are non-profit and regionally accredited.

For those that are interested, I looked very closely at the following schools during my search…all have great programs and should be considered by anyone else looking for an IT/Technology type of program:

• Univ of Alabama @ Huntsville - PhD in Engineering Management - Little emphasis on business & IT but that may change soon according to the school. Would be a great school for someone from an engineering background and who wants to stay in engineering.
• Indiana State University - PhD in Technology Management - Good program but limited specialization options. I think this program’s use of a ‘consortium of schools’ should be the model for other schools around the country to follow for DL doctorate programs.
• Grenoble - DBA Program - Great program with excellent credentials but just not what I was looking for.
• Walden - PhD in Applied Management & Sciences - Expensive compared to the others + it is a for-profit….but well regarded around the country by people ‘in the know’.
• Colorado Tech University - Doctor of Management - Good program. Another for-profit school that has some detractors and some cheerleaders. The lack of a dissertation bothered me…but also intrigued me.
• Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Lille - PhD in Strategy & Project Management. Good program for someone looking to specialize in PM for their career.

There were a few other schools that I ran across, but none that really tweaked my interest like the above schools.

Keep checking in…I hope to keep posting updates to this blog to let everyone know how the program is going.

Technorati Tags: Dakota State University, Doctor Science, Doctorate, Education, Information Systems

Charles Green over at “Trust Matters Blog” has a pretty good post titled “Credentials, Elitism and Web 2.0” that discusses the ‘credential’ problem in the world today.

Take a read of Charles’ post…it has a very interesting discussion about some ‘library traditionalists’ vs Wikipedia that is good all by itself…but the best part of the post is the following few sentences (emphasis mine):

Credentialism is a disease in academia these days. Universities brag about the number of faculty with top-school PhDs. The BA now does what the high school diploma used to do—serve mainly as the cutoff point for any meaningful job. The line of sight between education and any meaningful sense of competence is getting more obscure, not less.

If someone earns and MBA, does that automatically qualify them to run a business? Does earning a law degree automatically make someone an expert attorney? Not in my opinion it doesn’t.

Expertise and experience must accompany a credential to give it some weight. Credentials are worthwhile things to have but an overemphasis on them and underemphasis on experience and expertise can lead a person or organization down a dark path.

Technorati Tags: Education, credentials