Changing the introductory is course to improve future enrollments: An irish perspective

A significant challenge facing the IS discipline worldwide is the reversal of the low numbers of students currently enrolling in IS courses. While there is a growing body of literature which offers various insights into the IS enrollment crisis, almost all of this work is either from U.S. scholars or based on findings from U.S. universities. This paper seeks to bring a much needed international perspective to this issue. The setting for thispaper is the Kemmy Business School at the University of Limerick in Irelandwhere enrollments on the IS program have grown from a low of 12 in 2007 to 70 in 2011, a five fold increase. Using a set of steps laid out by Firth etal. (2008) we detail how this success was achieved. Supported by focus group and survey data, we provide new ideas on how to engage business schoolstudents in the IS discipline in a way that encourages them to specialize in the discipline. This paper presents a useful and immediately applicable planfor all IS programs that are seeking to grow or strengthen their offerings.