BADM 353: Information Systems Analysis and Design

Syllabus: BADM 351: E-Business Management

Term: Fall 2009 Location: MW 1049 BIF Time: Class 12:30 pm - 1:50 pm Final: 1:30-4:30 PM, Tuesday, December 15 (This is unconfirmed and Subject to change) Credits: 3.0

Instructor: John Burke Email: [email protected] Mailbox: 350 Wohlers Hall Office Hours: By appointment

Text: E-commerce: Business, Technology, Society, 5/e, by Laudon • Traver, ISBN-10: 0- 13-600711-2

This text is one of the more popular textbooks for this course and is widely available both on campus and online.

How to contact: If you need to contact me, email is by far the easiest way. I usually check my email several times a day, and should respond to you within 24 hours. During vacation or weekend hours, responses may take longer.

As a TA I am often forced to juggle many responsibilities, and I may not be able to meet with you at your convenience. Please do not take this personally, and understand that I will do my best to accommodate you, unfortunately this may not always be possible.

Please see me if you are having a problem with some aspect of the course, but also keep in mind that our meetings are not only a time to address problems. I'd be happy to talk with you about your areas of special interest. I enjoy teaching and I enjoy talking with you. If you have questions or just want to explore an idea, email me. However, this does not mean I will do your homework for you, or hold your hand while you complete an assignment.

Finally, when you try to conduct business with me in the moments before class starts, I sometimes feel harried and can't give your question or issue the attention it deserves. It's much better if you make an appointment to discuss your concern or to send me an email. Introduction: Welcome to E-business Management. This objective of this course is to give you an overview of the different ways businesses are using new Internet technologies to manage their businesses. Much of this information is new, having developed over the last few years. As such, hopefully this course will help you understand e-business better, and give you something to talk about in meetings with your future employers’. In particular, the people who will interview you for jobs!

Because this class is about computer systems, some of the course will be based on teamwork while using computers. Therefore you must take responsibility for interacting with your classmates and me and for willingly using computers. Computers are meant to help you. Consider them as part of your team. However, sometimes team members don’t always work well together, so be prepared for an occasional glitch, or problem. These problems are meant to be part of the learning experience, and won’t affect your grade very much or at all so long as it was not due to your leaving everything to the last minute. Assignments will be short and frequent out to help prevent such a situation.

Goals of the Course: A principal objective of this course is to improve your learning and analytical thinking skills in regards to systems analysis and design. This includes developing good study habits, time management, the ability to read and solve problems, reasoning by analogy, formulating good questions, and the use of design methodologies to create an enterprise- wide or smaller computer system.

You will learn to apply your knowledge to new situations. This includes being able to recognize what's being asked, evaluating the available information, and conceptualizing how to solve problems. Often, this involves breaking a complex problem down into smaller, more manageable components and the use of tools like ER diagrams, UML, flowcharts etc.

Finally, you will be exposed to much of the jargon and background material used by computer professionals. Do you know the difference between XML and XSL? Do you know what Cisco does? Why would a company choose to use Unix over Linux or Microsoft? We will discuss some of these very issues in class, and you will learn to communicate your discoveries to others by writing and presenting in a succinct and organized fashion.

More succinctly, these can be broken down into the following three goals. Hopefully you will:  Learn some of the technologies used in e-business  Actually develop your own projects, using techniques learned in the class, combined with your analytical ability.  Learn some of the jargon of computer professionals Teaching Method: This course is primarily a lecture course, presented in module form, supplemented with discussion. I have purposely broken the material in short segments to facilitate its absorption. During a typical class period, I will begin with general business, and then will present three (approximately 20 minute) segments of material broken up by a "topic of the day" or some other activity.

Presentation: To break up my lectures and keep us all alert, we will cover several short topics of general interest each week. These topics are designed to be brief, to involve students, and to be useful for avoiding the comment: "How could you have gone to college and not know ___?!" These will generally be presented by students, for students. They will be assigned and graded by me and your peers.

I may call on you for your ideas on a subject during class. This is not to punish you. It is to find out what you think, what your experiences have been, and to gauge how well I am doing based on your understanding of the material. Do not take it personally, and keep in mind that you will be asked questions on the job. It is important to practice responding to questions both intelligently and professionally, even if the only answer you can give is “I don’t know”. In fact, because the field of Information Systems is so vast, you will often not know the exactly correct answer to a given question, and the same applies to me. I may defer an answer to one of your questions to another class depending on its relevance to our current topic, the relevance to the current course, and my knowledge of the specific topic you bring up. “I’ll get back to you” is a very common and usually safe answer in the computer field, but not on our quizzes and tests.

Expectations: You can expect me to:

 Plan the course AND alter that plan as needed. I believe the best curriculum comes from the student. That means that we will take advantage of unforeseen events that capture our interest, and then juggle the class topics as necessary.  Give you feedback – both written and oral. I take the assignments in this class seriously, and have made giving feedback a top priority.  Bring my expertise into the classroom. This includes formal study, professional experience and development, and stories from real life. I believe that we can learn through stories. (You, too, are encouraged to bring stories to class to stimulate discussion.)  Be patient when you are struggling with ideas. To me, the struggle reveals that learning is taking place.  Provide clarity when the struggle gets too strong.  Be open about options. I think it’s great when students bring ideas of how to form a class session or perhaps request a topic.  Treat you, as adult learners, with respect. Here is what I expect from you:

 Participation in class, which includes, showing up, speaking up and listening.  Effort to make this class your own. In other words, what will you do to foster your learning?  Completion of assignments – including the reading.  College-level quality writing: legible and proofread. Assignments should be typed. If there are a significant number of errors or if it is difficult to read, the assignment will be returned to you prior to grading for changes. In most cases, your assignment will then be late and docked points.  Honesty. Cheating and plagiarism are unacceptable as per the university code of conduct.  Courage. Courage to challenge what you read or hear (even from me). Courage to talk with me if there are concerns – before they become burdensome.

It is especially important that you listen to students, whose opinions differ from you own, challenging the opinions while remaining respectful of the individuals who hold them. You are expected to be attentive during class, ask questions if you do not understand something, and participate in class discussions. You are also expected to listen respectfully to other students and me when we are speaking.

Work: Reading: Is required and should be done before class as outlined in the assignment sheet. That is, reading assigned for a class should be done prior to that class.

Assignments and Group Work: Assignments are designed to give students practice with methodological tools they probably will not be using in their projects. These will generally be more abstract in nature, i.e. “How could businesses use this technology to reach their suppliers?”

Tests: Quizzes will be short and based on the assigned reading and “Topics of the day”. The questions are designed to test that you have read and understood the material. They will be multiple choice/true false/fill in the blank type questions.

There will be a Final given during finals week at the assigned time. The questions will be multiple choice with some longer essay/problem solving questions thrown in. These longer questions will be to test that you can use the tools that you have studied to solve relatively simple problems.

Group Project: The group project will also have frequent and hopefully short assignments due throughout the semester. This project is to check for deeper understanding of real world concepts and problems, and to check that students can use tools of the various methodologies learned throughout the semester. Behavior and Professionalism: An important part of the class involves group work and class time. Unprofessional and/or disruptive behavior will not be tolerated, either within your group or during class. This should not be a problem for 99.99% of students, but any such behavior will be dealt with severely. Any behavior deemed inappropriate, at my discretion, will result in a minimum reduction in the student’s final grade by one letter grade for each incident regardless of how the student does in other parts of the class. It may also result in further action by the College/University discipline committee:

Inappropriate behavior includes, but is not limited to, cheating, bullying, plagiarizing, being disrespectful to other members of the class etc. Should a major disagreement occur with myself or another student, the general rule is take it up outside of class.

Evaluation: Weight: Goal: Assignments 20% Analysis and Tools Final 20% Jargon and Analysis Group Project 30% Analysis and Critical Thinking Presentation 20% Jargon and Critical Thinking Instructor’s evaluation 10% Presentation: Each student will be required to give two presentations on a topic, assigned by me, during two different classes in the semester.

Goal: 1. The student should be able to give a talk on this subject for 5 minutes, for example in a job interview.

2. The student should be able to give a professional presentation.

The presentation should be 10 minutes maximum.

In addition, the student will need to create a report about the subject, detailing the technology chosen. The report should be 3 pages (single spaced) maximum, not including cover page. One page is sufficient, two pages more than enough.

The presentation and report should detail the following:

2 minutes What the topic is, which will generally be a technology or a product. What the technology is, or what does it do?

2 minutes Who uses the technology or product? How common is it? What are the main substitutes or competitors?

6 minutes When would this technology or product be the best choice? When would this technology or product not be the best choice? How is this technology used, B2B, B2C, C2C? What are the pitfalls for a company?

The presentation and report will be due in class on the date assigned.