Bridging the Industry-University Gap: An Action Research Study of a Web-Enabled Course Partnership

Abstract

This chapter discusses a course partnership involving Day & Zimmermann, Inc. (DZI), a large engineering and professional services company, and Temple University. The course’s main goal was to teach students business process redesign concepts and techniques. These concepts and techniques were used to redesign five business processes from DZI’s information technology organization. DZI’s CIO and a senior manager, who played the role of project manager, championed the course partnership. A Web site with bulletin boards, multimedia components and static content was used to support the partnership. The chapter investigates the use of Web-based collaboration technologies in combination with communication behavior norms and face-to-face meetings, and its effect on the success of the partnership.