A programming course for business MIS students

The business program at the University of Washington, Bothell has recently established a new management information systems concentration. As an integral part of the technology foundation, students are required to take the typical software engineering course from the computer science department. This paper describes the motivations behind this decision, and the results of collaborative efforts between the business and computing faculty in creating a custom programming course to prepare MIS students for the software engineering course. This newly created programming course is designed to challenge students to apply and refine their basic programming and problem solving skills, and in doing so, to experience the often tedious software application development process. The implementation of the new course is based on programming the automation of popular commercial software systems. The results of our initial offering indicate success in building on the modest technical background of typical business students in designing and implementing programming solutions to moderately complex practical problems.