Non-IS students are more than ever the most important audience for IS education, given the urgency of raising digital leadership literacy throughout all business professions. The author recently restarted teaching the introductory class after 10 years and was shocked to find so little had evolved in our standard toolbox. This sparked the application of three related methodological approaches: autoethnography, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. We aim to study what can better engage students to succeed in this course (i.e., bring some concepts to practice), and what a (beginner) faculty needs to get the job done with confidence. The author’s viewpoint is presented in the form of a rough critique as “first impressions” in field notes. A proposal for a new open access IS textbook and courseware is formulated based on this experience, as part of the Business Technology Management Body of Knowledge (BTM BOK) initiative seeking to reshape IS/IT education.