Managing Operations and Information Technology (Spring 2005)


Class time: First 8 Saturdays                   Spring 2005
Instructor: Dr. Chih-Yang Tsai
Office: SBB 148, TEL: 257-2934 
Email: tsaic@newpaltz.edu
URL: http://www.newpaltz.edu/~tsaic
Office Hours: Mon. & Wed., 12:30-2:00PM, 3:15-3:45PM other times by appointments

Days and Class Hours: Spring 2005
Saturdays from 9:00 a.m. - 11:50 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 3:50 p.m.: 7 Saturdays: January (22, 29), February (5, 12, 19, 26), March 5 and a 2-hour final exam on March 12.

Course Outline

Objective:This course is designed to help students understand the role of two important business functions, Operations and Information, in an organization and address key management issues in the two areas.  One of the focuses is on the interaction between the two functional areas.  It covers the materials described under the title, Business Environment & Concepts - Information technology, in the revised Uniform CPA Examination.

On the operations management side, major topics include which have benefited and changed greatly due to the development of information technology.  On the information technology side, we emphsize the development in It examines the emerging role of IT as a new functional area and covers information technologies used at various levels of business decisions and operations.

Textbook: K. Laudon & J. Laudon, "Essentials of Management Information Systems", 6th Edition, Prentice-Hall, 2003, ISBN 0-13-145144-8.   Due to cost concerns, I do not order any textbook for the Operations Management part of the course.

Access to Blackboard Server: All announcements, homework assignments, transparencies used in class lecture etc. will be made available on the blackboard server.  Every student will get an account for the course.  Please check the announcement periodically for new events (Events will also be announced in class.)

Academic Integrity: please read the academic integrity policy carefully.

Evaluations:

    1. Presentation (20%): Each student is assigned to take charge of presenting a chapter (some chapters may have more than one student).   I will take charge of the first two weeks and student presentations start from the third week of the semester. In addition to the print out of your slides, you will also hand in an essay (no more than three pages) summarizing your presentation materials.
    2. Assignments (14%): There will be three weekly assignments.  Students can choose to work on two of the three, each accounted for 7%.
    3. Case Studies (20%): Three cases from the textbook will be discussed.  Students can choose to work on two of the three, each accounted for 10%.
    4. Final Exam (30%): an in-class final exam that covers all subject discussed in class.
    5. Class participation (16%): Students are expected to participate in class discussions.  Evaluation of classroom participation include relevance, frequency, depth of students' comments to the subject being discussed.  Cases and Assignments are counted only for students participated in class discussions.

Course Syllabus

All chapter numbers and page numbers refer to those from the textbook.


Assignments
Cases
Presentations
Week 1
Application Software Exercise (p. 35),
Dirt Bikes U.S.A. (p. 36)
 
Chapters 1, 2
Week 2

Enterprise Integration: The Pepsi Challenge (p. 366) Chapters 10
Week 3
Application Software Exercise (p. 183), Dirt Bikes USA (p. 183)
Chapters 4, 6
Week 4

Case Study: Will New Systems Keep Delta Flying (pp. 291-295)
Chapters 5, 8
Week 5
Developing an Open Source Solution for Knowledge Management
  Chapters 3, 9
Week 6

International Case Study 1 (pp. 565-571)
Chapters 11, 12
Week 7

  Chapters 13, 14, 15

Course Preparation Guides

There are some basic guidelines students can follow when preparing for class presentation, homework, chapter papers.  Evaluation of performance on those assignments are largely based on those guidelines.  There are common issues for example, relevance, organization, clarity, etc. for all those assignments.  There are also unique factors in each form of assignment.  For example, in class presentation, time management is one important issue but it is not as critical in other forms of assignment.  Specific requirements for presentations, comments, and chapter papers chapter can be found in the guideline page.