Assignments

You will be given the opportunity to collect up to 1000 points. See the Grading Page for more information.

All assignments are expected to have a certain degree of professionalism about them. The reports should look as if they will be presented to an employer or a client. Your presentations in class should also be professional looking, with nice Powerpoint slides. If you know you will be given a presentation, you should dress accordingly as well. You will be DEDUCTED points if you fail to meet this level of professionalism.

Case Studies:
-50 points for failure to present
-10 points for failure to participate

You are expected to participate in this class. You will be broken into 7 teams of 5. Every week or so, I will pick 1 team to present each of the case studies and stimulate each of the class discussions for that day.

Your group will be expected to come prepared to lead the discussion for approximately 30 minutes with questions and answers. You must bring Powerpoint slides that outline your discussion. Each member of the group is expected to have contributed and to speak.

Groups that are not presenting should also have been PREPARED as well. The presenting group will lead the discussion by asking for each of the other group's solutions in order. Therefore you will be expected to question the solutions described by presenting group, as well as defend good solutions you came up with.

Answering the questions at the end of the book's case studies is required but NOT enough! You will be expected to present:

• The salient facts about the company in question
• The IT problem
• Different possible IT solutions that you propose
• The pros and cons of each IT solution
• Your final recommended IT solution

NOTE: The good solutions that you are looking for should be supported by the ideas presented in the chapter.

Shopping Projects: (50 points each)

Information Technology changes extremely rapidly. In order to be an effective MIS personnel, you will need to be able to research and evaluate new technologies as they come along. So we will be having a series of shopping projects for you to evaluate the current technologies that exist today.

You will be given a situation (ficticious company) for each shopping project. You will then find at least 5 different quotes from different IT vendors. You will be expected to describe the following in your written reports:

• The salient facts about the company in question and the IT problem
• At least 5 possible IT solutions that you propose. The quotes must be REAL and up to date!
• The pros and cons of each IT solution including the features of each product
• Your final recommended IT solution

Your reports again are expected to be highly professional looking. I will be evaluating them as if I were your client and you were presenting these as your solutions.

Here is a sample of the style and quality of writing and presentation that I will be expecting from your reports. This is an actual proposal that was submitted to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii, by the Kama'aina Computer Boys. You should use it as a guideline, but not directly copied as a template.

Proposal for the Chinese Chamber of Commerce

Midterms: 250 points each

What would a class be without mid-terms right? These should be fairly straight forward. They will come straight out of the book chapters that we've covered. If you've read the book and answered the questions at the end of the chapters, you should be able to do the midterms without any difficulty.

Database Project: 50 points

This course assumes that you have had the pre-requisites of ICS 101 including Word Processing and Spreadsheets. However, we want you to understand how to use more advanced technology such as Databases to gather and evaluate information. You will be given data, and will be expected to discern useful information from that data.

Web Site Project: 50 points

One of the most important topics today is the World Wide Web. Web skills are both essential and marketable! I want everyone that comes out of this class to be fully hirable by employers seeking basic web developers. You will be given a ficticious company and will be expected to produce a website that fits that company's needs and means.

Final: 250 points

The final will cover the remaining chapters not covered in the previous midterms. It will not be comprehensive. Again, this will be taken straight from the book. If you've read the book and reviewed your Midterms you should do just fine.

Extra Credit: 25 points

I will be conducting an experiment involving Spreadsheets during the semester. If you participate in the experiment, you will earn 25 points worth of extra credit.