ITWF: The Research Component of a Model Information Technology (IT) College

University Of Arkansas Little Rock, Little Rock AR

Investigators

Abstract

EIA-0204267 Good, Mary L., Mitchell, William M. U. Arkansas, Little Rock Title: The Research Component of a Model IT College This ITWF award provides support to the University of Arkansas, Little Rock to use the tools of IT to serve the educational enterprise in the same way that these tools support business enterprises. In 1999 the state of Arkansas recognized the shortage of IT workers and created the College of Information Science and Systems Engineering, called the Cyber-college of Arkansas, at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The Cyber-college will design a database that will house data on every facet of the college's recruitment and first-year student experience across four computer-based four-year degree programs. The database will: provide a test-bed for conclusions derived from demographic and pedagogic research from other studies. be mined for new associations and clusters of experience and behavior patterns that will suggest research in new directions. provide data on the IT students of Arkansas and on the efficacy of the various strategies that the Cyber-college has implement to achieve its mission. prototype recruitment and retention databases that could be installed in other IT college and thereby contribute an important tool to further the understanding of the efforts of IT colleges to serve underrepresented population groups. Once built, this dynamic data model will be sustained within the Cyber-college and the data that it collects and the analysis that it engenders will provide insight to the longitudinal problem of maintaining the supply of college-trained professionals in the IT workforce nationally.