Terry Begley MBA, MCSE
COBA Technology Coordinator
tbegley@creighton.edu or terry@tbegley.com
280-2619 (office) 280-2172 (fax)
http://eden.creighton.edu/mba553

The Principles of Information Systems presents an introduction to the fundamental concepts and issues relevant to the successful development, management, and use of organizational Information Systems (IS). The course includes an overview of current and emerging Information Technologies (IT), and covers the support commonly offered by IS for operations, transactions processing, tactical management, and strategic decision-making. The course emphasizes the areas that reflect the future directions of the field, such as artificial intelligence, telecommunications and networking, the Internet, intranets, CASE (Computer-Assisted Software Engineering) tools, and end-user computing.

I am a Creighton staff member, and my office is located in BA 112A. I am here generally from 8:00am to 4:30pm, Monday through Friday. See above for phone and email information. If you send email with attachments, please note that Creighton does not allow emails over 2 megabytes in size. If you wish to email larger attachments, please email them to terry@tbegley.com. When you email, please use a subject line with the words MBA 553 in the title so I can identify the message in my inbox easier.

Friday, June 8 and June 22 from 6:00pm - 10:00pm
Saturday, June 8 and June 23 from 8:00am - noon, and 1:00 - 5:30pm
The class meets in BA 110.

Since innovation and change are a daily routine in IT, it is hard to keep up with such dynamism only by studying it from a textbook. I've got some articles on the class website, and we will also look at other online media.

You will also need a Creighton University email account, an account on Grackle, and access to the World Wide Web, either at a computer lab, home, or office. I will provide some of the supplements. Others will require a library or World Wide Web (WWW) search by the student. We will also do some work on Grackle, a Red Hat Linux server in our college. I will create accounts for everyone on Grackle the first day of class.

We will be creating individual websites on our Linux server, Grackle, as well as using it for hands-on exercises in networking. Your research paper will be published on your website at the end of the semester. We will use the HTML text to follow along as we create our pages.

There is always something new and exciting in the technology field. Three times during the class (the second, third and last days of class) you will make a presentation to the class on an interesting website, a new product, a new service, or something new and exciting in the technology field. You can use any of the presentation media in the classroom. You must turn in a one-page sheet to me describing to me your site, item or news as you present your Tech Tip and News. Each item should take about three to five minutes to present.

All assignments that are handed in late will be docked 10% per day that they are late, unless arrangements have been made at least 24 hours before the due date. The term LATE refers to all assignments turned in after the class time on the assignment's due date.

The following are the grades and their descriptions available to the students. A student’s grade totally depends on what he or she has achieved during the course: the grades will be earned, not given.

"A" indicates not only outstanding achievement but also an unusual degree of intellectual initiative.
"B" indicates attainment of above the average, satisfactory for 500-level courses.
"C" indicates satisfactory but minimum quality work in courses above the 500-level.
"D" indicates failure—no credit.

The point values of the assignments and exams are given below: