AIS is critical to accounting work and education. Despite its importance to the careers of future
accountants, there is relatively little existing research into relevant AIS education issues. Graduate
and undergraduate curricular and teaching innovations have been described, but research on the efficacy
of such innovations is needed. The academic community needs to know what has worked well
and what must be improved. Instructors also need to know about innovations that have been tried
but found not to work or to be efficacious as planned, along with reasons why. Assurance of learning
or outcomes assessment programs should be described and tested. The best practices regarding the
AIS curriculum should be reported. Only 18 articles (10 empirical, 8 descriptive) about the AIS curriculum
have appeared in 30 years. This insufficiency is problematic for such a fundamental component
of the accounting curriculum.
Future research should continue to explore more fully course structure and delivery relative to the
success in developing competencies appropriate for an AIS career. However, to date this body of literature
has been limited to understanding the status quo of the AIS courses and curriculum. Research is
needed to study the role that AIS should play in both the undergraduate and graduate accounting curricula.
Faculty efforts to identify a common body of AIS knowledge for accounting majors should be
described and studied. The course materials and textbook content essential to support that knowledge
also should be identified, described, and studied.