Instructor: Dr. Jack D. Becker

Office: COBA 338E

Phone: 940-565-3113

FAX: 940-565-4935

Email: becker@unt.edu

Office Hours: Tues. and Wed. 5-6 p.m.

Americans with Disabilities Act Information

The College of Business Administration complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act in making reasonable accommodations for qualified students with disabilities. If you have an established disability as defined in the Americans with Disabilities Act and would like to request accommodations please see me immediately. Usually the ADA office in the Student Union is the students’ initial point of contact and it is that office that would inform me of what is the norm in accommodations. This notification must be done well before the scheduled event.

Textbook

Information Technology for Management: Improving Quality and Productivity by Turban, McLean and Wetherbe, John Wiley Publishers, 1996; 1^st Edition.

Grading Policy

Your grade for this course will be a function of two items. The first is the weekly projects. These are referred to as MiniCases in the textbook. Depending upon the course enrollment, these oral classroom presentations will likely be group projects in which the whole class will be expected to participate. Be sure to bring up the salient issues in the chapter upon which the MiniCases are based. The MiniCases count for fifty percent of your grade in the course.

The second item of importance for grading is the final exam. This will be one of the International Cases in the back of your textbook. As with the MiniCases, use the questions at the end of the case to guide your presentation. The final exam counts for fifty percent of your grade in the course.

Class attendance is mandatory. Class will participate in grading project presentations. The instructor will lower your final grade for excess absences.

This course is heavily case-oriented. This is the Harvard Business School method of presenting material to the students. Critical thinking and analysis of issues is therefore encouraged and demanded for the course.

Course Objectives

This overview course is designed to present advances in information technology (IT) which have sparked dramatic changes in the way organizations conduct their business. In response to these developments, business people around the world are asking questions, such as: How can we use IT to help support our organization? How will new forms of IT transform our jobs, our organizations, and our industries? What are the types of things that can go wrong with an information system project? What can we do to improve our chances for developing a successful information system? Why is everyone so excited about the Internet and the WWW? What do we need to know about IT to survive in today’s environment? The objective of this course is to provide students with an opportunity to develop their vision, knowledge, and skills so that they will be able to address these types of questions and play a leading role in the effective application of IT in the workplace.

The course will examine the interaction between information systems and other components of an organization. Specific topics to be covered include: the strategic role of information systems, the Internet and the WWW, electronic commerce, reengineering, the human impacts of information systems, the management of change, information systems development and implementation, and emerging types of ITs such as group support systems.

Schedule: Subject to modification

1 October 27 Foundations—Chapters 1 and 2

2 November 3 Organizations and IT—Chapters 3, 4 and 19

MiniCase presentations 3.2; 4.2 (Note: MiniCases are identified as “Chapter”<dot>“MiniCase” number. In other words, case 3.2 is the second MiniCase in Chapter 3)

3 November 10 Enabling Information Technologies (IT)—Chapters 8 and 9

MiniCase presentations 8.2 and 9.2

4 November 17 Development—Chapters 10, 11 and 18

MiniCase presentations 10.2; 11 .1

5 November 24 IT Implementation—Chapters 12 to 14

MiniCase presentations 12.1; 14.3

6 December 1 Advanced IT—Chapters 15, 17 and 20

MiniCase presentations 15.1; 17.3

7 December 8 Review

8 December 15 Final Exam