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Information Systems Security as a specialized area of study has mostly been taught at the graduate level. This paper highlights the efforts of establishing an Information Systems (IS) Security track at the undergraduate level. As there were many unanswered questions and concerns regarding the Security curriculum, focus areas, the benefit of certifications, and limited experience of undergraduate students, we reviewed prior literature and conducted in depth semi-structured interviews of industry executives that are responsible for the security portfolio within their organizations. We present findings that can benefit not only our efforts but also other schools that plan to offer similar programs at an undergraduate level.

Teaching office applications such as word processing, spreadsheet and presentation skills has been widely debated regarding its necessity, extent and delivery method. Training and Assessment applications such as MyITLab, SAM, etc. are popular tools for training students and are particularly useful in measuring Assurance of Learning (AOL) objectives. Meeting these assessment objectives has become a crucial issue in business schools as it now plays a major role in AACSB accreditation. It is our contention that these tools are fundamentally necessary to train and assess students to meet specific objectives that support a particular goal. In our experience, the simulation component of these tools is not enough to ensure all objectives. In this paper, we describe our experience with the use of in-the-application assignment projects to supplement the assessment and training simulation in order to improve final assessments and close the AOL loop.

From February to June 2008, Google ran its first ever student competition in sponsored Web search, the 2008 Google Online Marketing Challenge (GOMC). The 2008 GOMC was based on registrations from 61 countries: 629 course sections from 468 universities participated, fielding over 4000 student teams of approximately 21,000 students. Working with a real-life client, student teams planned, executed, and assessed a three-week online marketing campaign using Google AdWords, all funded by Google. In this article, we share how the GOMC augmented a Master of Business Administration, Management Information System (MIS) course, providing each class team with a unique, experiential, electronic-commerce project. Student feedback shows that the projects stimulated student interest in technology and marketing as well as provided experience with creating effective ad campaigns and direct marketing via the Web, specifically with the Google AdWords platform. In this article, we provide a brief explanation of sponsored search, an overview of literature on pedagogical use of experiential team projects, a discussion of how the project provided tangible illustration of traditional MIS topics, and address why this type of exercise is well-suited for a class project format. Based on our experience, we will offer advice on what worked, what did not, and recommendations for the future. The article should be of interest to educators who might consider participating in future GOMCs, as well as others who might consider the inclusion of Google AdWords (or similar program) as a pedagogical tool in their curricula. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)