Students & faculty present at conference

May 28, 2019

Several faculty members and students from Dakota State University contributed to papers that will be shared at the Midwest United States Association for Information Systems (MWAIS) conference this month.

“Attending conferences provides opportunity for a wide variety of people to have exposure, and to exchange ideas and experience,” said Dr. Cherie Noteboom, Associate Professor of Management Info Systems and coordinator for the Ph.D. in information systems program. The events also offer the opportunity to promote Dakota State graduate and Ph.D. programs.

Those presenting at the conference, held at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, include:

Andrew Behrens, instructor of information systems and Ph.D. information systems student, was author on two papers – “What are Healthcare Providers’ Perceptions of Health Information Technology Project Training?” and “How can Health Technology Project Communications be Improved in a Hospital?” Behrens worked with fellow faculty  Noteboom and Dr. Dave Bishop on the papers;  Ph.D. student Kaushik Ragothaman contributed to “What are Healthcare Providers’ Perceptions of Health Information Technology Project Training?”

Behrens decided to research both topics due to his time spent working for a critical access hospital in Minnesota. “It gave me the unique opportunity to get some doctors’ and care providers’ feedback,” he said.

After analyzing survey results, Behrens and his colleagues learned that a lot of communication is preferred, and a project champion for health information technology would be best.

“IT employees should have clinical knowledge so that they can tell the physicians why they’re doing a project and how it makes the physicians’ jobs easier,” Behrens said.

These two papers were the first ones Behrens submitted and was excited to hear they were both accepted. He is looking forward to receiving more feedback, to network with fellow researchers, and be inspired by new research ideas.

Dr. Pam Rowland, assistant professor of computer science/cybersecurity, worked with Noteboom on a paper “Adolescent Girls’ Influencers in Cybersecurity Education and Activities” that was accepted to the program. The paper was inspired by Rowland’s dissertation for her Ph.D.

Rowland examined what causes girls to either go toward cybersecurity or away from it. By interviewing middle school girls, she found the factors that influence girls most are community influence, social media, self-efficacy, family, and education.

“We need more workers in cybersecurity, and girls are an untapped resource who have a lot of value to give in this particular field,” Rowland explained.

A revised version of the paper has been submitted to the International Association for Computer Information Systems publication.

Information Systems Ph.D. student Kevin Callies authored the paper “Employee Acceptance of Employer Control Over Personal Devices,” with the help of DSU faculty Noteboom, Dr. Daniel Talley, and Dr. Yong Wang.

Callies researched the use of personal devices for work-related purposes as part of his dissertation.

“The use of personal devices for work-related purposes is on the rise and will continue to raise security and privacy concerns into the future,” Callies explained. “Businesses are primarily concerned with the protection of their private information while employees need to be aware of the privacy issues when they use personal devices in a professional setting.”

Callies feels he has a better understanding regarding how to perform quality research through his work on his dissertation and this paper.