Focus Group

Last week I conducted a focus group to evaluate the Master of Arts in IT Leadership program curriculum.  We also determined the skills and knowledge our graduates need to be prepared for leadership positions within the IT organization or as enterprising functional managers applying IT to their business units.  The focus group consisted of alumni, current students, and members of the IT profession.  I was very impressed with the results of this focus group.

Together our group identified the types of individuals that this graduate program would serve and revised the program's mission to match the purpose of our degree.  All of this set the groundwork for our most important activity: to identify the desired outcomes for the program.  These items were not the official program outcomes but rather the knowledge areas and skills our students should have developed when graduating from the program.  Our group identified many great areas that we need to address in the curriculum and while quickly arriving at a consensus on these knowledge and skill topics.

I found this focus group activity very enlightening and am so pleased with the results.  It was a great experience to hear from IT practitioners on their needs and have them participate in the process of designing the curriculum for our program.  Our new curriculum will make the program even more relevant and will provide greater value for our graduates.  What a great success!