Business Graduates as End-User Developers: Understanding Information Literacy Skills Required

Abstract

This investigates the introduction of ‘real-life’ scenarios with undergraduate business students to enhance their understanding of end-user development of database applications. It identifies the problems experienced with end-user development due to incomplete information, incorrect design procedures, and inadequate software knowledge. End-user development of small-scale applications by non-IS/IT professionals is becoming increasingly popular in the workplace, and it has been identified by many researchers as having some managerial risks associated with it. Conversely it has also been identified in the research that the benefits of application development by these ‘end-users’ mostly outweigh the managerial risks. By allowing access to ‘real-life’ situations, improving their information literacy skills, and identifying the design issues relevant to good database development, students will be given an insight into how businesses use and store data, and be more aware of the requirements for their future employment.