This assignment requires you to participate in a group effort to research an MIS topic of your choice and present your results to the class.
Monday, 2005-2-7 before 17:00 by email to trgCS330w2005@csg.uwaterloo.ca. Put [cs330 A2 proposal] in the email Subject: field. Approvals will be sent by return email by 2005-2-11 at 23:59.
Monday, 2005-3-7 either by email to trgCS330w2005@csg.uwaterloo.ca, or on paper in class or the assignment drop boxes. If you use email, put [cs330 A2 report] in the email Subject: field.
Study one specific area of Management Information Systems in depth. This involves reading at least five (5) academic journal articles on the topic.
Your group must research its chosen topic (see suggestions below), and prepare a research report on the topic. The report length must be 1,500 words per group member (plus table-of-contents & bibliography) (minimum of 3,000 words for two people in a group; single-person “groups” must meet the 3,000-word minimum). The report must be properly formatted as a research report with an abstract, introduction and conclusion. Diagrams, charts and figures are often helpful in describing complex issues and should be used where appropriate.
Note: Journals and magazines are in the Davis Centre library. Because of the large class size this term, DO NOT remove journals from the library. Read them in the library or make copies. Journals noting an IEEE or ACM designation are good. Call numbers are in the ballpark of IS Management (HD 28) or Computer Science (QA 76).
There are also electronic journals available from the UW Electronic Library. Go to http://ejournals.uwaterloo.ca.
You can also look at a new service being offered by Google called Google Scholar (URL: http://scholar.google.com), which has the stated purpose of “Search through journal articles, abstracts and other scholarly literature”. As this is a new service I’m not sure how useful it will be – but even if it cannot provide the full text of articles it may be useful to help to direct your library search.
You may also use industry publications, magazines, vendor documents and other sources, but these are additional to the requirements for the academic journal articles. Be careful not to fall into the trap of simply writing a description or comparison of commercial products.
The target audience for your paper is yourself – ie CS330 students. Papers should be written to a level that allows your classmates to read the paper without signigicant difficulty.
You must give me a proposal that specifies:
· your proposed topic, as specific as possible
· group members
· the requested presentation method. There are a limited number of in-class presentation timeslots available (9 to 12). These slots will be filled on a first-come, first-serve basis combined with my determination about topic duplication and suitability. My decision will be final and non-appeal-able.
These proposals do not need to be extensive – they just need to be enough for me to understand what you intend to do. However, topics that are too general will need to be clarified. For example, “Decision support” is too general, but “Decision support in the large retail sector” or “DSS in the software development industry” is better.
Your group should submit only one proposal for the entire group. The email address that I receive the proposal from will be used to reply to the proposal. I will assign a “group number” in my response – this must be used in all subsequent communications about your project.
In addition to the research paper, your group must present your results with one of the following methods:
· 15-minute in-class presentation, or
· website.
· If you are selected to give a presentation, you will be assigned a presentation date at random. Your presentation must not deviate from the presentation materials you submitted on the report-due-date.
· Prepare and present a 15-minute in-class presentation on your research topic. This could be a traditional lecture format or something else (e.g. a scripted debate format to discuss two opposing views; a mock “trial” for a legal or ethical topic, a video, etc.).
· You must submit a copy of all presentation materials (e.g. PowerPoint files plus lecture notes and scripts, etc.) with your research report on the report due-date.
· Lead a five-minute question and/or discussion session after the talk.
· Every member of the group will be expected to participate (somehow) in the presentation.
Prepare a website that presents your research topic. The site should exploit the hyperlinking capabilities of HTML and HTTP and not be just a sequence of plain-text pages. Use hyperlinks for references, glossary terms, sidebar discussions etc. Be as creative as you want – pop-ups, multi-media, rollovers, fly-outs, whatever!
The site must be online and accessible by the research report due-date. You must include the URL for your website in your written submission (in the introduction or conclusion would be a the appropriate place), and also advise me by email so that I can put a link to your site on the course website.
Sites can be hosted on UW computers or elsewhere. If you use non-UW resources you are responsible for all technical support and hosting fees (if any).
Feel free to devise your own. Whatever you choose, be sure your proposal is specific enough for me to understand what you intend to study. Many of the items below are too general and need to be focused. The textbook may provide some ideas for topics, too.
· One specific type of information system (Strategic, Management, Transaction, DSS, EIS, etc.). Be especially careful not to end up with a product description, though.
· People Issues - HR, education of users and executives
· Service Issues - Help desk, end user support, maintenance, operations
· Privacy versus usefulness – how to balance requirements
· Government standards for electronic privacy: PIPEDA, HIPPA, others
· Electronic Healthcare and the Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR), e.g. HL7, others
· IS Planning and Estimating
· Distributed Systems: Architecture, Security, MIS integration
· Data Management: database requirements
· Outsourcing: industry-specific, legal/ethical issues, contract management & compliance
· Disaster Planning and Recovery
· CASE Tools as a example of knowledge-management systems
· Fourth and Fifth Generation Languages & their use in the context of MIS
· System Development - Legacy, Benefits, Measurement, Quality, Productivity
· Cost/Benefit of IS in specific industries or management levels
· Mobile Computing and IS
· EDI/EDM
· Global IT
· Electronic commerce and sub areas
· Intellectual property protection for IS
· Workflow management systems & their effect
· IS for healthcare patients – patient portals
· Business process re-engineering: principles, practices, case studies
The report and the presentation will be marked independently. The marking schemes for the presentations are described elsewhere.
The marking scheme for the report is as follows:
· Content: 80%
o topic motivation, definition, introduction and conclusions
o depth of research, coverage of topic
o accuracy, research quality
o relationship to IS as we have defined it. How does the topic fit into the model of enterprise IS?
o apprporiate use of diagrams, illustrations, charts, tables, etc.
o bibliography
· Format: 20%
o spelling, grammar, paragraph & sentence structure, compostion & quality of language
o organization structure, abstract, including sub-titles
o length
o research-paper style: TOC, page numbers, references, figure/illustration list (where appropriate)