Professional and vocational training for information systems undergraduates-an action learning project

In Software Engineering today, as in the whole of the information systems (IS) profession, there exists a variety of approaches, tools and methodologies to be exploited by the practitioner. There is no reason to suppose that this trend will not continue. The only safe prediction to be made is that changes in tools and techniques will continue to arise at an ever-faster rate. The challenge for educators is in how to equip our students with the knowledge and skills to be effective and discriminating practitioners, i.e. “reflective practitioners”, in the manner of Schon (1984). This paper describes an action research project which will attempt to elicit the “reflective” skills required of practitioners, while at the same time imparting them to students of Information Systems in an action learning environment