Design Science Research in IS
Spring 2011
Objective
The course develops skills needed for conducting design research in information systems. This kind of research aims at designing artifacts such as tools, methods and techniques, that make information systems more effective and efficient. Students will also acquire skills in writing research proposals and articles that follow the design research paradigm. They will learn how to publish such research.
Content
[Kuechler and Vaishnavi, 2008] details the emergence of IS design research (ISDR) and how it become a distinct line of research within the IS ’eld. [Iivari, 2007] defines IS as an ’applied science of meta-artifacts’. An artifact is broadly de’ned as ’those bund les of cultural properties packaged in some socially recognizable form such as hardware and software’ [Orlikowski and Iacono, 2001].
Design science in information systems research have been well de’ned in [March and Smith, 1995]. Recently, several papers promoting design science in IS have been published. Among them, a largely di’used paper [Hevner et al., 2004] consolidated artifact based research and design research in IS, and established IS design research as a legitimate alternate way of doing research to the more established empirical IS research. Di’erent aspects of design science in IS research have been considered in the literature: paradigms and theses [Iivari, 2007], framework and guidelines [Hevner et al., 2004], taxonomy and theory [Gregor and Jones, 2007], method and process [Pe’ers et al., 2008], and patterns [Vaishnavi and Kuechler, 2008].
Upon completion this course, the participants will have a general understanding of the current state and trends in design research in information systems, and be aware of design paradigms, frameworks, theories, methods, patterns, evaluation approaches, and rationales.
Furthermore, the participants will be able to use theses design techniques for
’ reviewing papers,
’ writing research proposals, and
’ writing articles and theses.
Course materials are listed in the syllabus and provided on the web site. Weekly reading materials will acquaint the participants with the topic to be covered in the upcoming class. Students are required to read all of them for the course. The assigned reading list is provided in the ’Course Schedule’ section of this syllabus.
Evaluation
For grading purpose, activities will be issued based on the following scheme: (a) 30% for the class participation, (b) 20% for the research proposal, and (c) 50% for the design research article).
syllabus
http://www.hec.unil.ch/yp/DRIS/
http://moodle.unil.ch/course/view.php?id=1165
