Theory and Practice Behind the Course Designing Enterprisewide IT Systems

As a consequence of the co-evolution of business and information technology (IT), the responsibilities of software engineers are expanding. They are becoming much more involved in business-related issues. When defining computing curriculums, this trend needs to be taken into consideration, for example, by proposing courses on business and IT integration. This paper presents a transdisciplinary, problem-based learning course that addresses business and IT. The target audience is computer science and software engineering students. The course has three modules: a competitive game to illustrate business thinking, role-playing to practice IT requirement analysis, and an IT integration project to present how modern off-the-shelf technologies contribute to IT system realization. Each module has several sections comprising experiential learning and traditional ex cathedra lectures. The originality of the course lies in the combination of breadth of the subject and depth on what is taught. The goals of the course and its detailed contents are presented: the emphasis is on the process-related/technical and emotional learning experience by the students and on the author’s experiences gained from teaching that course.