COCA: Concept-Oriented Course Architecture Towards a Methodology for Designing and Teaching Information System Courses

Abstract

This chapter introduces the concept-oriented course architecture (COCA); an architecture that utilizes IS concept as a fundamental building block to guide a methodology for designing and teaching IS courses. COCA aims at supporting rapid composition of IS course/curriculum out of a sound and complete set of IS concepts provided by well-specified business models, market or standardization organizations such as ACM and IEEE. COCA is defined, composed of three roles: (R1) concept providers, (R2) a concepts registry, and (R3) IS course/curriculum designers. These roles interact through four operations in order to design/teach an IS course/curriculum: (O1) publish, (O2) consider, (O3) validate, and (O4) teach. This methodology, based on a flexible, scalable, well-specified architecture of the IS concepts and their organization, will assist the complex and resource-consuming task of designing and teaching IS courses in the information age, where the IS tools, including management information systems (MIS) and information technology (IT) are rapidly evolving.