Listening to the affected: student views after starting a 4th year module in Data Warehousing

Abstract

The development of a successful module in data warehousing for 4th year IT students requires involvement of various stakeholders. Critical systems thinking and especially critical systems heuristics promote the involvement of those affected by an intervention, in the design of the intervention. In the development of a data warehousing module the students, who selected the module as part of their 4th year programme, are viewed as "affected" by the design of the module. This paper reports from a critical systems heuristics point of view, on the perspectives of these students who selected the module. Interpretive data collection by means of written interviews were done. Data were analysed using content analysis. Critical systems heuristics differs from other critical systems methodologies in terms of the requirements of rational argumentation. This paper provides examples of polemical argumentation and how these non-rational arguments are the voices we as faculty members (course designers) should hear. The paper concludes with aspects to take into consideration for the development and instruction of data warehousing based on the views of students after they have selected the module