Object-Oriented Design: A New Approach to Curriculum Development

Business schools are being challenged by industry to produce students who possess a broad understanding of the interlocking functions of business. However, the traditional curriculum design, especially at the introductory level, has emphasized learning business functions in isolated, stand-alone courses. This paper presents a new approach to designing introductory courses, utilizing a model called object-oriented design. This approach consists of breaking introductory courses in each discipline into discrete objects or modules. These objects are then re-coupled across disciplines to create a series of more holistic business courses. Object-oriented design is explained in more detail and then applied to re-design an introductory information systems course. A typical introductory course in information systems is used as an example to demonstrate how objects are created