MIS and DSS

The main goal of MIS is in allowing you to see (like in those sci-fi movies) the entities of the real world as they really are in all their properties, changing views, angles and focuses as you need to inspect some features closer and some from a bigger perspective. For example, when you walk through the College you actually do not see much beyond the walls, offices, and posters. Once you access the College MIS – you immediately see (supposedly) all involved entites and processes in their normal activities and deviations that have to be notices and corrected. Augmented reality (AR) allows you to combine physical vision with MIS orientation (this is where the research on MIS and AR will be appropriate!).

Decision Support Systems serve not as much as vision enhancers but as enhancers of your abilities of making decisions based on the vision. Human abilities to juggle numbers and keep various relationships among multiple parameters in mind are severely limited. Here come DSS. They allow you to use such tools as scenarios (when you change some assumptions and see what will happen to ALL parts you are interested in by providing formulas of the corresponding relationships), optimization (when the system quickly finds for you the best decision among many possible), and many others. Armed with such tools (especially now available in mobile formats) you become super beings (cyborgs, if you wish, as part human and part systems) far more advanced in your mental abilities than those who doesn’t use special supporting systems. I actually run a special course fully dedicated to DSS where students learn the decision theory (on how to always make best decisions in all situations) as well as how to arm yourselves with simple (and more advanced) DSS dramatically enhancing your decision making abilities and outcomes in all your activities. Recently one student emailed me that he got a job because of this knowledge.

You can use this power throughout all your life experiences no matter what you do and where you work. Although many industrial systems of this kind are very expensive, there are some simple tools (like spreadsheets in advanced forms of use) that already upgrade your abilities significantly. Some of them we are learning in this course. This is kung fu of modern life. The more work and understanding efforts of the material of this week you apply – the more you will get out of it. This is the way to compete with AI allowing the mankind to stay relevant.

Comments to T4.4. Absolute Reference Task

The DSS task with the spreadsheet was done by the majority of the students properly, using the correct formulas connecting one parametric cell (Inflation Rate) to all cells in the Future Cost column and eventually changing Future Profit cells too by changing ONLY ONE Inflation Rate cell.

Do the required reading of Excel tutorial on absolute reference or google any other tutorial on absolute and relative references. Notice that if the formula is done with the use of absolute reference than it can be copied to ALL other cells of the column and the result will still be correct although it refers to same one Inflation Rate cell. If yo do not use absolute reference that you will have either insert 1.04 manually in all cells or the copying from one cell of the same column to other column cells will not work!

Commentary on W3P1 Research Grading

Majority of the students did a normal-level research (but not better - so I didn't apply extra points for extra quality). I posted comments of other students in spreadsheet grading reflecting some shortcomings. Unfortunately only one student used an extra day to respond to the observations in replies and improving the posts. The general weakness was in poor focusing of a rather small post and the resulting weakness of  conclusions that are supposed to detail how the post clarified the stated goal of the mini research and what were the main results of such research. 

Interesting that even though the grades were hidden from the authors and were more adequate than the open grading - the comments on the problems in the posts were harsher than in the published reviews, where the feedback critique was insufficient, which resulted in its grading. This in turn, didn't allow the authors to apply the full force of their  in correcting the problems. The spreadsheets were all properly done, which shows that the zoho sheet part was sufficiently understood - this saved reviewing/grading from really low points...

As a result, majority had their grades in the range between 5 and 7 points.

Notes on the Database Research tasks (T2.5 and T2.8) results

Most of the students did interesting research and offered some analysis in answering the questions.
Although this work has been done -- the analysis of the databases was insufficient in depth and features. In a number of posts the secondary functions were discussed that belong rather to the separate software programs that might use the database functions somehow but do not belong to the database mechanism per se.
This is important to understand in the duration of the course where the clear analysis of the databases and database management systems is a key part of the IS knowledge. It is also important to be able to see the problems and benefits of the databases through the surrounding software programs since sometimes the problems and benefits come not from databases but from such applications. But sometimes the decision might be made to change the underlying database as inadequate and restrictive for the further evolution of the application value (remember value chain) of the whole system and even whole business based on IS, which is based on db.

The grading was largely overrated (this is why I wanted to see if the closed grading that only I see will be better) and might be caused by insufficient understanding by the graders that the task was about the databases and not applications.

Also, the lack of negative notes didn't allow students to use the opportunity offered in the task of improving the work AFTER it has been reviewed and in one case it hasn't been done even with negative reviews. This is not good for effort, merit, and attendance evaluation.

Web 2.0 and Collective Intelligence

The best way of learning systems, and IS features in particular, includes the design of a small information system versus just learning buttons for the current version of Excel and Access. Normally, the development of an IS, even of a small size, is quite expensive and/or requires a lot of man/hour investments of highly skilled systems developers. Only organizations with sufficient capital were able to develop and use IS...

The evolution of software as a service (SaaS) or even Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) with various types of accompanying web services (and apps) created a possibility of new methods in IS development – assembly of systems out of existing services LEGO – style. This simplicity has led to a dramatic increase in end-user creativity and development capabilities. In this course I want you to learn the most simple but effective ways of such system development for personal and organizational use. Become a one-person army... The basic services we were using so far included free blog development and support services, Zoho spreadsheet and database services and, what is most important, services allowing sharing and collaboration. Already this set of tools, if learned a bit deeper than you've done so far, allows for some basic IS development.

The new, mostly free, and easy to use services that can be incorporated in any custom IS design/redesign led to a new phenomenon: social networks. But the most important effect goes beyond increased activity of emerging social structures. This new unleashed power is studied in Collective Intelligence (CI) dealing with creation of super intelligences out of rather simple processing performed by its parts. Examples include ant societies, various swarm intelligence examples, and... effective teams and organizations. This possibility of acquiring enhanced intelligence is the biggest asset and advantage an organization can dream about nowadays, which comes not as much from the mere infrastructure presence, but its proper architecture and processes in accordance with this new Web 2.0/CI developments.

Web 2.0 technologies released the power and creativity of regular IT users making them producers/consumers (prosumers). These Web 2.0 technologies paired with proper CI organization (where effective collaboration is the key) are the main and the most fascinating developments in modern IS.
Another important event, not to be missed, is rapid growth of cloud computing (see the textbook) that makes Web 2.0 services and accompanying networking even easier.

Blog List Help

Students can use http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExUrvw3KHg0
as a video instruction for Blog List setting.

Blog addresses of other students can be taken from my blog or from the Blog forum of the past.

Databases

Although a database table might look like a spreadsheet, the capabilities of a database management system (software engine behind the databases) are quite different. For better understanding you might go to the Featured Samples (while on the Home page in your Zoho Reports site) to see that after the initial tables are created and filled with data, the rest of the database consists of various queries (that could be saved for future easy customer use), reports, charts, etc. All other database products, created from the data tables by using simple and effective tools, allow to SEE and ANALYZE a LOT of DATA form MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW, as compared to the relatively small amount in typical spreadsheets.

Well designed and developed (in terms of convenient analysis) databases - is what create added value to the initial data collection often stored in some input “flat” files. Data warehouses (or smaller data marts) are systems enhancing this analytical and decision support function of organizational (and even personal) data.

In my professional capacity, I was often asked by organizations that invested a lot of money into collection of valuable data – to help them make better use of this information (bang for the invested buck, if you want). This usually results into the development of an information system with a database at its core (this is why they call them “information systems” :)

Comments to the Hardware Task

The goal of the h/w and s/w task was to let students understand that modern hardware stretches far beyond CPU, memory, hard drives, monitors, etc. With growing ubiquity of computing and universal connectivity almost ANYTHING can become/play role of hardware & s/w. It can be you refrigerator, pen, glasses, even human brain (remember latest experiments allowing the thought control computers directly). This is why in my comments to some student posts I offered a link to the site showing some interesting examples of "hardwarization" of the world.
Increasing mobile capabilities of an organization means actively research and use the network possibilities among various devices. In the future the Internet will be not for people but mostly for devices to talk to each other (like now the biggest traffic is between the switches (computers managing the networks and the Internet traffic).

Although some good examples were offered by the students - I was hoping to see more research and fantasy in students' posts on this topic. Networking, mobility, distributed and enhanced sensing are changing the very essence of human beings, social structures, and organizations redefining what is  a part of an increasingly pervasive concept of an Information System and where  their boundaries end.

More on Course Organization

I want to say a few words about the online organization of this class and its goals (you might use some of this info in your Experiential Learning Report to be written at the end of the semester). The experiential learning in this class is based on learning and working in online environments (versus face-to-face). One of your tasks at the end of this semester will be in showing your understanding of this experience, what you’ve learned from it, what practical skills and orientation you obtained, as well as how it served your better understanding of the subject of the course.

The learning goal of placing students in such environment for this particular course is based on the fact that information systems (as the subject of the course) normally include heavy use of computers in communications, orientation, learning and decision making. In the IS major this introductory course is further enhanced with all those chapters that are in the book - as separate courses. From this point of view, being exposed to computer-mediated activities on your own (without the teacher standing behind your back) is important for the understanding of benefits, difficulties, and problems that have to be addressed during IS use and development. In this course you actively use an original IS, which includes Moodle, Internet, and your local systems, augmented by you, as producers/developers and consumers at the same time (so-called prosumers), with additional system components (like Blogger, Zoho, and others that we will use later), with shared files, user-created content, Q&A knowledge base, learning accounts in these systems, spreadsheets, databases and various means of sharing and publishing information across the set of networks (local and the Internet) – the topic of the next week.
Also, as you’ve noticed, the labs as well as exploration of the material require sufficient feedbacks on the work done, that just cannot be offered in an hour and a half of face-to-face lectures. You probably noticed that in this course you have almost an uninterrupted flow of feedbacks from me and other students (those who ask for help or require some guidance from my point of view – get it whenever necessary). This is impossible in face-to-face formats. I am actually spending much more time on this course than coming twice a week to school. My local network shows the course situation on several screens (along with my ongoing research in artificial intelligence). Your course connectivity is close to modern corporate "always on" status too. This allows for dynamic adjustments, additional explanations, and corrections (impossible in traditional environments). Such flexibility is becoming more and more important in the real world settings when change management is continuous and dynamic with similar continuous and dynamic availability of employees to accept changes, corrections and additional info for adjustments in individual work. And here understanding and experience of IT beyond traditional monthly reports is indispensable.

For organized students the possibility of time management and deciding when and how much time to spend at each particular learning episode is important especially combined with saving time on doing this without commuting efforts. Of course, such benefits are not for all. There are students that feel better in the class and cannot work/learn on their own. This is why the course format is announced in advance and only those who feel that online format is better for their situation are expected in these classes.

Enter Zoho

As a part of the educational experience closely related to the week’s topics, you will get to work with spreadsheets (one of the most popular part of any office suits) and social network systems. The main trend now is in moving everything to the Web, which provides much higher connectivity and sensitivity for the components and processes of organizational systems. This is why our Web Development concentration program might be a valuable option for a competitive graduate.

During the course you will be creating an information system of your own using blog software as a platform allowing to place other pieces of the IS/IT puzzle on it in order to obtain the desired functionality. This will allow you to learn IS by developing one, which, in our case, will require no need in programming...

Zoho is, so far, the best online office suite offering Software as a Service (you might want to research the keyword SaaS). We will start with spreadsheet tools that not only allow to do what all spreadsheet software (s/w) allows, but also has extended options for sharing, collaboration, and publishing. Best of all, you need only a browser for work with it. Later we will use some other pieces of their suite.

Help on Zoho Spreadsheets

Help on Zoho Spreadsheets could be found in Create a Spreadsheet