Abstract:
This article forms part of research-in-progress aimed toward creating a comprehensive
graduate development framework that will assist Information Systems (IS) departments in
increasing the quality and quantity of their enrollments and graduates. In this article, we
present the IS Graduate Development Framework (ISGDF). This framework combines
concepts from four related fields of IS study into a single framework for identifying the
graduate development potential of IS institutions, courses, and development projects. These
four fields of study are: (i) Information and Communication Technology for Development,
(ii) economic labor market theory that relates to IS labor, (iii) a study of IS education
concepts and course structures, and (iv) a study of IS labor within the creative industries.
We present the ISGDF based on literature from these fields of study and show how this
framework can be applied by means of a comprehensive case study example. The case
study gives a detailed account of how the framework was used to identify, and improve,
the graduate development potential of an IS graduate development project. Findings from
the case study include several areas for possible improvement of IS curricula to increase
the graduate development potential of IS departments. Although the case study was
conducted in a South African context, we suggest that the ISGDF, and case study findings
report in this article, can be useful for informing IS departments toward increasing
graduate quality and quantity in their own contexts.
