The course is offered on the PhD programme in Informatics, to PhD students within the Research School Management and IT (MIT) and to external PhD students.

The course will be given on campus at the Department of Informatics in Lund. The course has an hybrid option that means that it can be possible to take some parts of the course from distance in discussion with the course director. 

Course background

This is an advanced course in information systems (IS) research. The assumption is that course participants have already taken (or will be taking) an introductory course in research in IS that covers some of the foundational elements of research within the IS academic discipline. 

The IS academic community emphasizes both rigor and relevance. In order to keep up its relevance, core research topics in IS also continually change, mapping to the current trends in technologies. This course is designed to help participants gain an understanding of the most recent topics and trends in IS research.

Course content

The course will be structured around main themes in the literature. These include the following:

• Next-generation and new theories in IS
• The use/application of mixed-methods in IS research
• Digital Innovation and Transformation
• Platformization
• Artificial Intelligence 
• Sustainability and smart-home technologies
• Digital Health
• The role of technology and impacts on social issues 

Course design

The course will take place over nine course sessions organized as approximately two-day seminars, held ~3 weeks apart. 

The course participants are expected to read the articles listed for each theme before the seminars in order to be prepared to present and discuss the contents of the article. The reading load for each session will be usually eight to nine articles. Note that there will be a significant variance in the density of the articles, thus, students are advised to plan their reading and study time carefully. 

2-3 students will be assigned a leadership role during each session. Collaboratively, they will be responsible for generating a scholarly discussion, involving all (most) course participants in the discussion, summarizing key points, creating an integrative framework capturing the essence of the readings, and facilitating the exploration of linkages among readings. 

The course will end with a seminar where publishable papers based on the content of the course will be presented and discussed (see more details in the next section). 

Assessment

Assessment will be done along several dimensions corresponding to the deliverables of the course. This includes the following:

• Active participation in the discussions during the course seminars. To the extent possible, comments by course participants should be thoughtful and specific to the papers being covered. 
• Quality of discussion leadership demonstrated during the assigned course sessions
• Quality of the paper written for submission to selected conferences