William Wresch, Ph.D. Clow Faculty 231
|
(920) 424 4151
(office) (920) 231 2789
(home) www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/wresch |
Gordon and Gordon, Information
Systems: A Management Approach. 3rd Edition, Wiley
The purpose of this
course is to give you a general overview of information systems with special
attention to hardware, system development processes, and business
applications. By the end of the course
you should be able to
Weekly
Discussions
1. Chapter
1&2 Management perspectives on Information Systems. What are the impacts they have on
business? Which management models do
information systems fully support, and which ones do they leave unsupported?
2. Chapters 3
Computer hardware and software basics.
Why binary representation matters and how software moved from punched
cards to Excel spreadsheets
3. Chapter 4
Database Management, data mining. What
can businesses do with the information they collect?
4. Chapter 5
Telecommunications, network topologies a fairly technical look at how we
connect to each other
5. Chapter 6
E-Commerce. Business models and
technical infrastructures
6. Chapter 7
Common information systems with a special emphasis on ERP systems like the one
being installed at K-C.
7. Chapter 9
Information Systems Development. Why
most information systems fail to deliver the business value promised and what
managers can do to improve the current state of the art.
Note: while our
text is both current and comprehensive, not all our discussion topics are
contained in the text. Check the course
web site each week for additional information.
Your
responsibilities
Week
3-7
Beginning
week 3 you will come to class each week with a two-paged, single-spaced paper
(or email the assignment to me). The
first page will be your summary of the assigned chapter. The second page will be examples you add to
the reading, either through business magazines you read or examples from your
work place. For example, in the week on
database systems, you might summarize articles about data mining or describe
your companys data storage strategies.
Always completely cite your sources.
Week 7
We will spend the
last hour of class taking a test on the main points of the course.
50%
- weekly papers (5). What I will be
looking for is the quality of your summary (did you identify the most important
points? Describe them clearly?). I will also look for the instructive value of
your example or article (Is it pertinent?
Fully described? Does your
summary demonstrate a deep understanding of technology and its
implications?) Note: Since this is a
graduate class, I assume I will never see a grammar, spelling, or punctuation
error in your writing.
50% - the final exam. The questions will be largely
short-answer. Example: 1) Name three
common network topologies and describe each in a sentence or two. 2) How is the Internet structured?
Grades: A=93-100, A/B=88-92, B=83-87,B/C=78-82, C=72-77
Attendance
Family
emergencies and business responsibilities are part of life. But since this is just a seven-week class, if
it appears you will need to miss more than a class or two, I will probably ask
you to drop the class.
Contacting me
Use
email. I have an answering machine at
home and at work, so feel free to try me by phone, but it is usually easier to
leave an email message. I check my
e-mail once or twice an hour.