Spring 2014 MIS492 Syllabus
Course Information
Room: EBA341
Time: Monday 1600 – 1840
Professor: Murray E. Jennex, Ph.D., P.E., CISSP, CSSLP, PMP
Office: SS3206
Phone: 594-3734
Email: murphjen@aol.com OR mjennex@mail.sdsu.edu
Office Hours:
Monday: 1500-1600; Tuesday: 1600 – 1800 or by appointment
Instant Message Office Hours: whenever online (be sure to identify yourself immediately so I
don’t ignore you)
Book: Course Reader: Management of Information Systems, other materials will be on
blackboard.
Course Approach
MIS492 is a combination seminar and lecture based course. Students are expected to be
prepared for class and to contribute to class discussions. Class nights will focus on a topic and
will not specifically cover the assigned reading chapter. Students are expected to be prepared to
ask questions and fully participate in class discussions.
Additionally, the class is approached using PMI (project management institute) and SEI (software
engineering institute) philosophies. I am a PMP and have worked a CMM shop and will bring
those insights into the class.
Course Goals
This course is designed to provide graduating (or near graduating) information systems majors an
in-depth overview of the various management and strategic issues relating to the management of
information systems. The course will focus on the theory and application of current IS
management practices, including topics such as systems outsourcing, ecommerce, knowledge
management, infrastructure issues, end user computing, small and medium enterprise issues,
security, business continuity, system development, project management, and ethical issues.
Objectives: Upon completion of the course the student should better understand technical and
organizational issues facing current IT managers.
Discuss organizational issues affecting IT managers:
1. Describe how managers measure and assess the value of IT to an organization
2. Describe how managers control end user computing
3. Describe how managers utilize virtual teams to improve performance
4. Describe the impact of outsourcing on managers and organizations
5. Describe how international issues impact IT organizations
6. Describe social and legal issues affecting managers and use of IT in organizations
7. Describe how organizations manage information security and risk
Discuss new technologies impact on IT in organizations
1. Describe how knowledge management can change and impact an organization
2. Describe how organizations make and support decisions
3. Describe how organizations use technology to respond to crises
4. Describe technologies used to enable enterprise data and decision making
5. Describe the need for security technologies and how their lack can impact an
organization
6. Describe the impact of web services on the organization
Grading - Assignments
The course grade will be determined using the following scale and assessment items:
Grade
A
AB+
B
BC+
C
Cother
Range
>=
>=
>
>=
>=
>
>=
>=
<
94%
90%
87.5%
83%
80%
77.5%
73%
70%
70%
Class participation is worth 10% of the grade. Participation is not just showing up to class.
Participation is active interaction in discussions, asking questions, answering questions, providing
context and opinion. Students who only attend class and do not participate in discussion will earn
no better than a 7 for participation, students who actively engage in class discussions and attend
consistently will earn scores above 7 depending on their level of participation.
Article write up, 4/7, 15%
Two Exams (non-cumulative), 3/10 and 5/5, 50% (25% each)
An individual project researching how a specific organization implements the topics discussed in
the class, write-up is due 5/12, 25%
The Exams are closed note examinations and will contain multiple-choice and essay questions.
The Project will be to perform a case study on an organization looking in particular at how the
organization implements/performs the topics discussed in class with an analysis on how well the
organization does. A paper summarizing the findings and using outside sources as appropriate
will be generated and turned in by the final date.
The article write up is for an article the student finds that is relevant to the course. The student
should summarize the article, explain how it relates to class, explain what you learned from the
article in 2-4 pages. Include a printout of the article.
I do believe in performance exercises over exams so there is an option to replace one exam with
a group of three exercises. These exercises are focused on analytics and knowledge
management. The exercises are:
Prac Ex 1: Use Freemind (free download at:
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page) as a graphical tool and create a
taxonomy and ontology for your personal knowledge management system.
Prac Ex 2: Teradata Network: MicroStrategy 9 BI Quick Warm-up Exercise
Prac Ex 3: Teradata Network: SAS Visual Analytics, Assignments 1-4.
The write up is in answering four questions:
 What did the student do?
 What were the results?
 What did the student learn?
 How does the exercise relate to the material that was covered in class?
To guide you in answering these questions the following discussion is provided:
Question: what did you do?
Provide a description of what you did. I know you probably followed the directions provided so
don’t do a step by step account of the directions. What I am really interested in are any problems
you encountered, what you did to overcome them, and any insights you learned about the
technology. Finally, in most cases the value of dss is in the journey more than the result, same
here, the better/clearer/insightful your write up is the better it scores.
Question: what were the results?
Provide any printouts of products produced, this could be a report, a map, a table, etc. To
improve the score on this section you should also explain what the printouts mean. What is the
logic for its organization, and in particular, how would you use it? What questions/decisions are
supported by the printout? Remember that I value the journey, so take the time to tell me the
story and determine the value of your printouts.
Question: what did you learn
I can't tell you what you learned. What I will say is that I reward insight. Insights are aha moments
(a term in use long before Oprah wanted to copyright it). If you see new ways of doing things,
new insights to your thought processes, potential future applications be they personal or work
related, crossovers to other topics, these are what I reward more than just telling me you learned
lots. I expect you to learn lots but it isn't till you explain where and what that I see that you really
did. Ok, so sometimes you don't learn much. I'll still grade this area high if you tell me why, what
you know, how this works on what you've done in the past, etc. Sometimes when you start doing
this you see that what you've learned is reinforcing what you've done and sometimes you even
have small aha moments. Bottom line is to be reflective, think a few minutes or overnight about
what you've done and how it fits into your nomological net (your personal set of knowledge base
structure, those theories and beliefs that guide how you evaluate and use knowledge). Then write
the section, when I see this done I always score the section higher.
Question: how does it relate to the material that was covered in the class?
As a minimum discuss specific topics that relate to what we've done and at least mention the
obvious ones. Be specific, cite the section/chapter/reading it comes from. Also cite the
topics/presentations that relate. The top scores come from also citing articles from the suggested
readings.
The write ups for the exercises are due the day of the exam that they are replacing.
All turn in work needs to be typed, have a cover page, and be single-spaced. Be sure to include
your name and the class on the cover sheet.
Reading Assignments
All readings are in the Course Reader or Course Documents in Blackboard. Each topic has its
own folder, course reader chapters are indicated, blackboard is for every night.
Date
1/27
2/3
2/10
2/17
Reading
blackboard
Ch 1, 2
Ch 3, 4
Ch 13
Topics
Introduction, IS Organizations, Policies, and Controls
Outsourcing, Benchmarking and End-user issues
International and Ecommerce issues
Viz Center Visit, Crisis Response and Visualization
Assignments
2/24
Ch 1
3/3
3/10
3/17
3/24
3/31
4/7
4/14
4/21
4/28
5/5
5/12
blackboard
none
Ch 5-10
Ch 11-12, 15
blackboard
blackboard
Ch 14
Ch 16, 17
none
None
Application Development and Project Management
Issues
DSS and Decision Making
In class exam
Knowledge Management
Knowledge Society/Knowledge Management
Spring Break
Data Warehouse and Mining, CRM, Analytics
Enterprise Architecture, Big Data, Analytics
Security Planning and Risk Assessment
Security Technologies
In class exam
Finals week
Exam 1
Article write up turn in
Exam 2
Project turn in
Course Polices
Students are expected to be prepared to discuss the assigned readings and to attend class. It is
understood that there may be occasions when you will have to miss class, on these occasions I
request you send me an email letting me know prior to class. Should it be necessary that you
miss class on the night an assignment is due or the exam or presentation is scheduled I request
notification prior to the absence so that exams/presentations can be rescheduled. I will accept
assignments via email on the due date as long as a hard copy is submitted at the next class the
student is at.
Excessive absences, more than 4, or a lack of participation, or excessive unrelated conversation,
or excessive use of computers for non class work will result in a 5% grade deduction. Excessive
will be in my opinion but students will be warned and given an opportunity to improve before the
deduction will be assessed.
Cheating is defined as the effort to give or receive help on any graded work in this class without
permission from the instructor, or to submit alterations to graded work for re-grading. Any student
who is caught cheating receives an F for the class, will be reported to Judicial Procedures, and be
recommended for removal from the College of Business.
Plagiarism will not be tolerated and rampant or repeated plagiarism will be treated as cheating.
Plagiarism is claiming other’s work for your own. This can be done by not properly citing or
referencing other’s work in your papers, copying other’s work into your own (even if cited and
referenced), and/or copying other’s work into your own without citing or referencing the source.
Citation and referencing errors will result in grade deductions for the first offense, repeated
offenses will result in reduction by a full grade on the assignment, an F for the assignment, or an
F for the class depending upon the severity and intent of the offense.
A 10% penalty will be assigned for late assignments. No assignment will be accepted if over 2
weeks late.
All turn in work needs to be typed, have a cover page, and be single-spaced with appropriate
spacing. Be sure to include your name, the class, and what the turn in work is on the cover sheet.