MIS 300
¥What this Course is About
¥Participative
Learning and Class Attendance
¥Grading and Learning
¥Academic Misconduct and
Intellectual Honesty
¥Assignment Lateness
Policy
This course is your chance to learn about the role and function of information systems in modern business organizations. But more than that, it's your chance, for some of you your only chance, to take a critical look at what information systems are doing. If you are going on to major in MIS, of course you'll want to have a solid foundation of understanding the basic principles -- everyone else is depending on you to get it right! But if you are going on to another business discipline, say marketing or finance, you'll be using computers and information systems heavily in your work. In the very near future (even now), few people will live in an information-free environment. Most of us will have information-enriched and -enabled jobs that we value and that are valued enough by others to compensate us for our efforts and time. In order to succeed, we'll have to use the tools that do the enriching and enabling. Even more important, we'll have to find and learn how to use the right tools for the right jobs at the right time in the right ways. Doing that requires critical judgment.
"But," you may object, "I already know how to use computers. I'm a whiz at Excel, I use Word like a champ and as for PowerPoint, just watch me make it dance." That's not going to be disputed in this class. But how do you know what to learn? What features are the best match for the job? What new software is better and how do I know that? Better for what? For whom? When? These are not questions of computer or information skills, which the Europeans have come to call "driving skills". Just as almost any 16-year-old in the US can drive a car, not many of them are asked to be test drivers, because in general 16-year-olds don't always exercise critical judgment.
In this course, we'll look at some whats. That includes "what's on the market?", "what's going on in the software shop?" and "what's this called?" And the usual journalistic "W" words are going to be tapped: where, who, when and the one that's mispelled "how" (too often it's "wow!"). But two others are going to be stressed: "Why" and "Whether". Why do we do X (use a computer, save data, speak to a programmer)? And there's whether or not we should do Y (buy a specific product, use a spreadsheet or a database, build our own software)? These are the more important, enduring questions.
Why and whether or not to ask these questions is probably the first one on your mind. The most important reason is that unlike accounting, marketing and production, information systems is a new profession, one that's undergone continuous and dramatic changes over the last fifty years. There are few traditions and even fewer philosophies. Most business managers consider IT (information technology) essential and IT professionals dispensable. There is too much hype and fear and a dearth of reasoned, reasonable thinking. There are rules in accounting, after all, and physical constraints on production and, well if there aren't strict laws about human behavior for marketers, there's at least five thousand years of experience. But with information systems, we're making it up as we go along, or so it seems.
So it's always worthwhile to ask why and whether in these circumstances, because anything that seems to bring order (Windows, for example) into chaos has to be questioned. And who better to do the questioning that a bunch of people who have survived their sophomore years at college? These four years of your life are, for most of you who don't become professors or inmates at mental institutions (there is a difference!), the only four years during which you can ask any question you want without fear of being fired, arrested or ostracized.
Furthermore, what better group to do the questioning that those who are going to be intimately involved with information systems. Already most entering MBA students (i.e., folks who are about five years ahead of you in their careers) are spending close to 90% of their days at a keyboard. You're not only going to be affected, but in a very real sense you are going to be the democratic electorate (otherwise known as a "market") that chooses its technological tools. And this will happen very soon.
Participative Learning and Class Attendance
Let's face it. Although your professor might have an IQ of, say, 102, the aggregated IQ of a class of 30 college juniors must be in excess of 3000! Maybe 6,000. It's a lot more fun to have thirty interesting questions than 200 facts about computers, isn't it? That's the core philosophy of the participative learning style. Your professor learns from you and with you.
What does he learn? He learns what you know, what you fear, what you like, what you think you need to know, what is hard for you to learn, what you trust, what you mistrust, what you find outrageous and what you find attractive. With this knowledge, he runs straight...well not to the CIA! He runs straight to his research desk and begins to fill in around those questions. What's hard to teach might turn out not to be true. What's scary might point out a marketing opportunity. What's trustworthy might point out a security weakness. What you find attractive might point to the next best idea. These are not trivial, either. Almost all of this particular professor's research has stemmed from events in class where a student asked "why" and the professor gave an answer that was either patently stupid or after some thought (sometimes weeks), complexly wrong. Puzzling this out has led to some interesting work.
Besides, what's really fun about teaching is not pouring cement into young people's heads. It's learning...yours and mine. Your learning comes from my being able to make concepts clearer or at least to zero in on where some concepts need improving. My learning comes about because each of you is an expert in your own lives. Each of you is taking a set of courses that is going to enrich your thinking and you'll bring that to class. I'll begin each class asking for questions and I expect to get them. I'll end each class with a brief summary and again ask for questions, hopefully ones that really puzzle you. In that way, we push back the murky frontiers of knowledge.
In order to make this happen, I'd like you to come to class every day. I'll be there, so should you. Otherwise it's a lot less fun for both of us. Attendance is not graded, strictly speaking, but if I notice you are missing for more than four classes (a sign-in sheet goes around in each class), I'll speak with you about what you are missing. As noted in the syllabus, for each class beyond four you miss without documentation, your grade will be reduced by 0.1 mark (on the 4-point Oakland grading scale) for a three-times-a-week class. For a weekly class, for each class you miss beyond two without documentation your grade will be reduced by 0.3 marks on the 4-point Oakland scale. Hence if you miss ten classes (for the MWF class) or four evenings for the weekly class , your grade will be reduced by 0.6, which is a considerable amount.
Grading is a fact of life at university. The purpose of evaluation if to provide feedback to both student and instructor on a student's progress towards learning goals and the instructor's progress towards teaching goals. Plain and simple, that's what the core of evaluation is. However, for a variety of (good and bad) reasons, evaluation has always implied grading, which is a semi-public weighing of progress. Whereas evaluation is a private contract really between teacher and learner, grading is an institutional statement of the effectiveness of the institution (the teacher, the learning, the instructional system). That's a windy way of saying that there is only a slight connection between grading and evaluation. Many, if not most, of you depend on grades for things unconnected with what is going on in the classroom: scholarships, maintaining registration, ego needs, peer relationships. That is very well understood. So when evaluation is turned into grades, there is a lot at stake, enough to make what should be thought of as a way of helping a win-win situation into a sort of zero sum game with winners and losers. That's the reality.
In that spirit, what I can offer is this. Evaluations of assignments and exams is done in order to provide feedback on what you have learned. The grades are what the world will see. If you don't like the feedback, let me know and I'll try to make it more precise, quicker, easier to understand. If you don't like the grades, try to find the source of the dislike. Was the grading done ineffectively, with errors? Let me know immediately. There will be no quibbling over this; these sorts of mechanical errors need to be corrected. Did you think that you "knew more" than the grade reflected? Talk with me about this. Maybe you are fooling yourself or maybe you need to focus more on what you don't know. Did you find the grade distasteful and ego-bruising? Think about what you have on the line here before you ask for higher grades to meet this need. A quibble or two might make you feel that you've triumphed over the evil professor, but in fact it will do no good for your bruised ego. I think it was Wordsworth who said "What you are stands over you and speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary." It's intellectually dishonest to claim you know something (if you don't) just because you've browbeaten someone into agreeing with you. Remember, we are talking only of ego-based objection here. Let the learning happen first; the grades will generally follow. Let as little stand in the way of learning as possible. If you feel there is something in the way (prejudice, for instance), speak with the instructor.
Academic Misconduct and Intellectual Honesty
In re the previous section, please note that any work that has your name on it must have had an essential part performed by you. To claim otherwise is intellectually dishonest. Academic misconduct is defined. Oakland university has policies on academic conduct explicitly spelled out in the undergraduate catalog. Click here to download a .pdf version of this information (search for "academic conduct" in the document). Because academic misconduct spoils the whole thing (because honest discussion and debate become moot when participants base some or all of what they say or do on misrepresentations), academic misconduct is treated as a serious violation of the implicit contract. Students found to have engaged in or promoted academic misconduct can face penalties ranging from zero grades to expulsion from the university and in some cases legal prosecution. We have done this in the past and will not shrink from doing so in the future.
Late assignments are problematic for everyone. Most assignments are graded in batches, which helps consistency of evaluation effort and is a more efficient use of the grader's time. Sometimes there is a good reason for lateness, but in the final analysis, it doesn't matter in the business world if you have a good reason or none at all: lateness is usually punished by serious economic fallout. Group assignments should be done in a timely fashion; procrastination usually is catastrophic for group process anyway. In any event, group project assignments can be accepted late. However, any assignment handed in late will lose 20% of its value for each 24-hour period late for up to 2 days. For example, suppose an assignment is due March 10 at 6:30 pm but is posted on March 11 at 7 am, it would be considered to be one day late and would receive a maximum mark of 80% of its value. If the assignment were posted on March 11 at 8 pm, it would be considered two days late and receive a maximum mark of 60%. Assignments handed in over 48 hours late (in our example, after 6:30 on March 12) would not be graded and will receive a mark of 0.
This webpage last updated on January 9, 2006