University of Brighton
Faculty of Management & Information Sciences
Brighton Business School Module Report
Module Title
Marketing Information Systems
Module Code
IT287
Courses/ Years Taught
BA with Marketing level 2 core
Module Leader
Geoff Ruggeri Stevens
Other members of the teaching team
none
Semester (or weeks taught if block mode)
1 through 2
Academic Year
2011/12
Introduction
The IT287 module first ran in 2003/4. A refinement of the original syllabus gained School
approval in July 2005 and has been applied in subsequent years including this one.
Statistical data including passes and referrals
Coursework Marks (30% of module mark)
As in 2010/11 and preceding years this was a group assignment in which students choose a
company for opportunity search, then design of a database system and a Web site. The
assignment continued to be seen by teachers and students as justifiably a group exercise.
Attempts
Mean
St.dev
Min
Max
2011/12
97
65.8%
8.3
43
77
2010/11
86
63.6%
10.9
43
89
Overall Examination Marks (70% of module mark)
Students had to answer any three questions from seven in a two hour exam. The results of
the exam are as follows:
Attempts
Mean
St.dev
Min
Max
2011/12
94
58.3%
13.0
29
78
2010/11
86
51.1%
..
15
77
Question-by-question analysis and commentary
Question 1 (Web 2.0): 58 people answered this question, average mark 60%.
A popular and well answered question, a lot of enthusiasm shown.
Question 2 (security): 37 attempts, average mark 61%.
Maybe humans like disasters! This question produced the highest average mark and
plenty of imagination.
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Question 3 (Wireless networking): 54 attempts, average mark 54%.
The “rural Africa” part didn’t elicit as much imagination as we had hoped, the rest of
the question was answered reasonably well.
Question 4 (CRM): 66 attempts, average mark 60%.
This was clearly the most popular question and it was enjoyable to mark because so
many of the answers were so lively and highly engaged with the subject.
Question 5 (e-Commerce): 59 attempts, average mark 60%.
We would have expected almost all students to go for this one. Answers and marks
were both very good. If the “imagine” part had attracted more non-student ideas, the
best marks would have reached very high indeed.
Question 6 (Intelligent systems): 10 attempts, average mark 41%.
This was never going to be a popular question but it’s a shame that those who did
answer it seemed mostly to have little comprehension and few ideas.
Question 7 (systems development): 17 attempts, average mark 57%.
A straightforward question which turned out average in more or less all respects.
Module/component organisation
Students received one hour of lecture per week, and one hour per week of seminar or
computer workshop in teaching groups of approximately 15 students.
Attendance
Lecture attendance was not as good as we’d hoped (which was true of most other modules)
but there was good attendance and engagement by students at the workshops and
seminars, in which students showed a pleasing enthusiasm for the assignment.
Student Feedback
Formal student feedback was not obtained at the module level because the IT287 lecturer
fell in line with the new School quality management methods in which module level student
feedback is to surface in the programme-level reports.
External Examiner Comment
Not available at the time of writing (13 June 2012).
Action Plan
There would be little point in much of a plan: the module will run for the last time in 2012/13
because it is a casualty of the “root and branch” redesign of the Brighton undergraduate
degrees which takes effect with level one in 2012/13. All opportunities will be taken to
consolidate and improve the module in its final year.
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