On Guiding the Business School Toward Computer Literacy

In colleges and unversities around the country it is common to find that needs for new courses in computing are recognized long before suitable courses are made available. This is especially true for colleges of business administration. The needs have long been obvious, but staffing such courses internally is a slow process. Some colleges of business are well served by computer science departments, but in other schools the catalyst for getting started is lacking. This paper addresses the problem by describing the development of a service course in computing offered by the Department of Computer Science for the College of Business Administration at the University of Nebraska. The approach taken to course development postulated that if a course is to appeal to a college of business administration, it must appeal to the special needs and aptitudes of the typical business student. This particular service course concentrated on special behavioral objectives: need to develop man-machine interface skills, attention to developing self-confidence and a sense of accomplishment, and understanding the information processing concepts needed in business today. The pedagogical approach to attainment of these objectives also was carefully fashioned for the given audience. As originally conceived, the cognitive objectives of the course aimed at teaching the analytically oriented business college under-graduate how to write programs in the FORTRAN language. In addition, the student was expected to be able to read application programs in the areas of marketing, accounting, finance, operations and personnel management. The course explained how these latter applications packages aid in the management decision process. Finally, the course required that the student become more familar with the general expository material in the area of electronic data processing.