CIS 301 Management Information Systems

Spring 2010
Teacher: Adam Reed, EE, PhD, CTT (areed2@calstatela.edu)
Class: Mondays or Wednesdays, 6:10-10:00 PM, SHC-139
Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays, 4:40-6:00 PM, Room ST-616

Course Description:

The catalog description of this course includes "organizational context of computer-based information systems; common application systems; information architecture; user role in systems development; social and ethical implications." Traditionally, this course and its counterparts at other universities present a snapshot of IS technologies and their applications in the present moment, or as recently as the date of the latest revision of a textbook based on a fresh snapshot every two or three years. When the half-life of IS technology and its specific applications in this snapshot is about 3 years, by the time the students get their MBAs or other graduate or professional degrees, and are confronted with actual information systems used in their future work, only one-third of what was taught in the traditional course will still be useful.

To extend the window of usefulness of this course (and, hopefully, its future counterparts elsewhere,) Prof. John Drake of Eastern Michigan University and I are working on a new approach: Instead of a snapshot of the state of information systems in the present instant, we are focusing on concepts and principles basic enough to remain useful for the rest of your careers. These concepts and principles will remain useful regardless of where your life may take you, not only in business and management but also in any profession and any field of science, scholarship or art. At the conclusion of our version of this course, you should be able to use the concepts and principles from this course to understand and use the information systems that you will encounter and need in your life, in the organizations that you may work and participate in, and in the global human civilization of the information age.

Prerequisite:

CIS 100 or accepted equivalent.

Time demands:

This course requires, in addition to 4 hours of lab/lecture per week, between 8 and 16 hours per week in independent study and practice. Students with prior familiarity with information systems will need about 8 hours per week in addition to class; students without prior familiarity with information systems may need up to 16 hours per week in addition to class time. You are required to study, in depth, all the listed readings before the corresponding lecture, writing down your questions; discuss your questions with your study partner; ask questions about each concept or principle during lectures; and, after each lecture and further discussion with your study partner, e-mail your discussion points to me at areed2@calstatela.edu, with the course number (CIS 301) and chapter number in the subject line of your e-mail, e.g. "Subject: Discussion Points for CIS 301 Lesson 2."

Web Resources:

This page: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/areed2/P10.301mis.html; and others linked below. You are responsible for reading or viewing each resource in its entirety, unless the reference below is explicitly limited to a specific range or list of pages or parts. If anything remains unclear after you have read or viewed the resource, follow the links in the resource recursively. Then, if needed, use search engines for additional follow-up. Discuss all open issues with your study partner. If there is still anything under consideration that remains unclear after discussion with your study partner, or if your interpretations differ, please bring up the remainig issues, insights, and anything else that may be relevant, at the appropriate point in the discussion in class. You are required to understand each concept or principle in enough detail to be able to use it. Understanding all the examples and tangents in the referenced materials is not required, but it can add to your education, and all questions suggested by your readings are welcome. You may receive extra credit if you suggest (by e-mail to areed2@calstatela.edu) replacements or additions to the listed resources that are new to me, and worthy of being incorporated in future versions of this course.

Tentative Schedule of Lessons:

Lesson Monday Section Wednesday Section
1 March 29 April 7
2 April 5 April 14
3 April 12 April 21
4 April 19 April 28
5 April 26 May 5
6 May 3 May 12
7 May 10 May 19
8 May 17 May 26
9 May 24 June 2
Final Examination (7:30 PM) June 7 June 9

Each link in regular font (below) points to your primary reference on the specified concept or principle. The indentation of concept and principle links corresponds to their places in a conceptual hierarchy. Because many concepts have multiple inheritance, this hierarchy is convenient but not unique. Other course components are listed in blod italics; additional assigned references and assignment details in plain italics; and anything else, if needed, in a plain bold font. 

  1. Course Introduction

  2. Communication
	Language
		Natural
			Lexeme
			Syntax
				Parsing
					Parse Tree
			Semantics
		Artificial
			Code
			Protocol
	Semiotics
		Symbol
		Act (linked section only)
Measurement
	Comparison
	Number
		Integer
			Base (section on "Bases and positional numeral systems")
			Modular Arithmetic (top section only)
		Ratio
		Real
			Precision
			Floating Point
		Vector
	Categorization (also called "nominal measurement")
	Data
		Information (sections whose titles start with "As...")
		Knowledge
		Visualization

  3. Logic (Top and "Nature of Logic")
	Induction (First 3 paragraphs)
		Concept (except appendixes)
			Measurement-Omission (included above)
	Deduction
		Syllogism (Top two sections)
		Operation (Top two sections)
			Not (Top 3 sections)
			And (Top 3 sections)
			Or (Top 3 sections)
			Exclusive Or (Top 3 sections,) XOR
		Devices (Top two sections)
			Gate
			Circuit (included above)
				Filp-Flop (Top section)
				Half-Adder [top (S) is an XOR gate]
				Adder
Production (Entries 1 and 4)
	Individual Ethics ("Life, Purpose, and Happiness," p. 22)
		Rationality (Second entry)
			Honesty (Entry 4)
	Values (Second entry)
		Creation
		Accumulate, Accumulation
			Storage
	Management
		Self-management (First meaning)
		Process
			Flowchart
				Action
				Decision
					Decision Support System
		Resource (Top section only)
		Planning
			Optimization
			Linear Programming (Top 3 sections)
			PERT Chart (Top 4 sections)
			Enterprise Resource Planning (Top 6 sections)

  4. Society (Review p. 22; top half of p. 23)
	Rights (included above)
		Life (top entry)
		Liberty (third entry)
		Property (fourth entry)
			Physical (included above)
			Intellectual
				Secrets
				Patents
				Copyrights
				Trademarks
			Privacy
	Social Ethics (included in "Society," above)
		Mutuality (included in "Society," above)
			Harmony of Interests (rest of p.23 and top 2/3 of p.24)
		Justice (top section)
		Trade
			Contract
				Transaction
					Accounting
						Double Entry Bookkeeping
						Transaction Processing
			Market
				Competition
				Auction
				Pricing
				Customer Relationship Management
			Supply Chain
	Cooperation (top entry only)
		Contractual Organizations
			Enterprise
				Proprietary
				Partnership
				Corporation
				Cooperative
			Institution
				Membership
				Trust
		License
			Open-Source, GPL
		Informal Collaboration

  5. 	Crime (see also)
		Theft
		Extortion
		Destruction
			Denial of Service
		Fraud (see also)
			Impersonation
				Man in the Middle
		Countermeasures, aka Security
			Data Integrity
				Checksum/Digest
			Firewall
			Cryptography
				Symmetrical
				Public-Key
					Session
					Digital Signature
					Infrastructure
						Certificate
				Steganography
			Authentication
				Password/Passphrase
				Biometrics
			Audit Trail/Logging
				Ownership
				Trust
				Access Control

  6. 	Government (top 2 entries only)
		Law
			Legislation (top section only)
			Precedent
			Regulation
			Enforcement
Midterm Exam (on Lessons 1-5)

  7. Automation
	Pre-Computational (included above)
		Printing
		Weaving
		Factories
		Railways
		Telegraphy
	Computing
		History
		Logic Gate Technology
		Software
			Machine Language
			Assembly Language
			Compiler
		Interpreter
		Applications
			Stand-Alone (linked section only)
			Operating System
			Pipeline Bulding Blocks
			Artificial Intelligence
				Pattern Recognition
					Transforms
					Normalization
				Genetic Algorithms
					Neural Networks
				Expert Systems
				Applications of Artificial Intelligence
					Agents
					Pen/speech input
					Conversational interfaces
		Simulation
		Data mining
			Web Search

  8. Contextuality
	System
		Component
		Interface
		Modularity (First two sections)
			Stack
		Emergence
		Ship of Odysseus (UNIX) Design Principle
	Reuse
		Programming Languages
			Procedural
				Function
				Recursion
			Object-Oriented
				Attribute
				Method
				Inheritance
					Multiple Inheritance
					Interface
				Information Hiding
				Access
		Snippets
		Libraries
		Processes
		Integrated Development Environments
	Platform
		Database
		Application Programming Interface
		Operating System
		Application Architecture
			Stand-Alone
			Host-Terminal
			Client-Server
			Peer-to-peer,Cloud
		World-Wide Web
	Modeling
		Ontology
		Object-Orientation (see Object-Oriented, above)
			UML
	Multi-Contextuality
		Ubiquity

  9. Integration
	Inter-process
		Protocol Standards
	Human-Computer
		Physical
			Screen
			Resolution
				Color
				Touch
			Keyboard
			Pointer
				Mouse
				Trackball
				Touch pad
				Joystick
		Command
		Graphical
			Dashboard
		Affordance
	Information Technology
		Architecture
		Infrastructure
			Network
	Service
	Enterprise
		Enterprise Examples 
			(Choose the enterprise or organization that you are
			most familiar with, discuss it with your study
			partner, and be ready to discuss its use of
			Information Systems in class.) 

Course Review

Application Skills:

You may not be awarded a passing grade in CIS 301 without demonstrating profficiency in 3 categories of applications: word processing (e.g. MS Word,) spreadsheet (e.g. MS Excel,) and presentation (e.g. MS PowerPoint.) You may demonstrate profficiency in each category in one of 3 ways:
  1. Proof of Specialist-level certification by Microsoft or Sun Microsystems in the corresponding Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org application.
  2. A certificate of completion of ITC training (or comparable training) in the corresponding application.
  3. A sample of your own work, e-mailed to me (areed2@calstatela.edu,) demonstrating mastery of the application.
If you are not already a certified specialist in an application, I recommend taking the available (and excellent) ITC training.

Grading:

The primary grading inputs are class participation, written input (e-mailed to areed2@calstatela.edu) and the mid-term and final exam grades. I will raise to an A or A- the grade of any student from whom I learn, by way of class participation or project, a new concept, insight, or technique. Concrete information about programs or bugs may also raise your grade somewhat, if it is useful and perceptive.

Participation:

Questions from which students may benefit will be answered in class. I will not answer individual questions during breaks or after class. If you wish to discuss something during office hours, please send me e-mail at least a day in advance; if the answer to your question may be of general interest I will discuss it in class. Questions and insights during class are encouraged; if I learn something new to me from your question I may raise your grade accordingly.

Study Partners:

You are expected to select a study partner among your colleagues in the class (or, but only if there are an odd number of students in the class, two study partners, so that you will meet in a group of three). You will exchange telephone numbers and e-mail addresses among partners, and meet with your parner or partners each week to review your understanding of current course content. Please make sure to bring to class any issues that come up in reviewing matters with your study partner. If you miss any class work you are responsible for obtaining your study partner's notes and recollections, and for asking whatever questions you find necessary to fill out your understanding.

Final Examination:

Section 8: Monday, June 7, 7:30-10:00 PM
Section 9: Wednesday, June 9, 7:30-10:00 PM

Accomodation of Students With Disabilities:

Reasonable accommodation will be provided to any student who is registered with the Office of Students with Disabilities and requests needed accommodation.

Academic Honesty:

A student who infringes the University's policy on Academic Honesty will receive a failing grade, without regard to other aspects of performance in this course.