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Statement:

Information survivability, for both students and practitioners can be conceptualized and learned with reference to the development of cases. These cased can describe the interactions of risks, systems management measures and consequences of information survivability. Fundamentally, information survivability can be meaningfully described in typical business systems metrics, i.e. opportunity costs, capital asset valuation and operational costs/returns.


Background:

In much of modern information management education there has been the focus on the development of systems and methodologies that support the creation of systems that provide new data and information. Typically, a systematic approach to information systems have been based on a "systems life-cycle". There is very little extant pedagogy that focuses on the study of the creation, management, protection and retirement of "mission-critical" data. The development of cases, accessible via the WWW supported by an interdisciplinary perspective may provide useful learning material for use in information management professional education and development.


Discussion:

The more traditional approaches of lectures, publishing paper "artifacts" and academic workshops, do not, in most views meet the learning needs of students and professionals who need access to content that reflect quickly developing concerns such as security of systems, protection of "knowledge assets", information privacy and information survivability. To meet these needs a special course was developed at the University of Texas at Austin. For the conduct of this course, students were drawn from several academic colleges and departments. The course made use of a special Website and students developed materials related to systems management, security of information and systems auditing. Learner interactions were supported through conferencing and collaborative tools. Lastly, reviews of security tools, resources and cases were developed and published using "active" server and client tools. Student performance and learner satisfaction was "in-process" measure and evaluated as attributes for the quality of the learning in this experientially-based course.


Extensions:

The Website, statement of work, project plans, content and toolsets are available for demonstration and use in other settings.

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