The IT thesis project

Abstract

In 2009 a repository was created to hold the body of masters theses and dissertations for IT degrees across the country. Before this, there was no central location where researchers could easily access these documents. Analysis of this repository has helped propose a research agenda for the IT discipline. The themes of IT research themselves were not surprising, but gathering the research to populate the repository did yield some surprising results. Much of the work done by IT graduate students simply is not readily accessible to the rest of the world. This makes it appear as though there are less IT graduate students than we thought, and the repository is currently only populated with just over 100 theses and dissertations.The presentation of the repository at SIGITE 2009 yielded good community support.There have been enhancements and upgrades for the repository in the last year, but we have as yet seen little community participation in the actual submission of IT research.

The evolution of information technology Capstone projects into research projects

“…In addition Cole and Ekstrom's analysis of IT Research Theses showed the following pattern of topics [14]: DEV: Development, building, implementation, integration indicating delivery of a system into a context.…”