History of Course

Professors in the CMS department began teaching end-user skills with the advent of the first microcomputers in about 1984. In Micro-based Software, we used the "stand-alone" packages of dBASE, Word Perfect, and Framework. A single integrated package that was powerful enough to include a relational database application was unheard of in the mid-80s. The smaller integrated programs such as Works and FirstChoice were used in the Introduction to Computers course, but they were not robust enough for serious business applications in our 3,000 level course. The next progression was to dBASEII, Word Perfect and Lotus. Around 1984, a software package called Smart actually combined a database, word processing and a spreadsheet, although the integration was primitive.

A local industry survey (Mawhinney et al., 1999) confirmed our opinion that knowledge of software such as word processing, spreadsheets and database was very important in hiring criteria. During the '90s, we moved from Microsoft's Office 95, to Office 98, to Office 2000, and now are using Office XP. Some of our colleagues think it is no longer necessary to teach end user computing in our department, that students are computer literate at an advanced level already, and programs are intuitive, anyway. We think there is a need for a type of self-paced instruction that students can tailor to their needs and learn the required skills in an anytime, anyplace setting (Marold et al., 1999). We believe it is more necessary than ever before, but that end user computing needs to be taught in a way that enhances problem solving and presentation skills, as opposed to just learning keystrokes. The ability to apply the application program skills learned to new situations in a typical business setting is crucial to success for our students — whether they are entering the job market as end user support personnel, or whether they are the end users themselves.