Creighton University, College of Business Administration
Monday 6:15 – 9:00pm, BA 111
Spring 2003
Terry Begley MBA, MCSE
COBA Technology Coordinator
tbegley@creighton.edu
280-2619 (office)            280-2172 (fax)
http://eden.creighton.edu/mis470

Course Resources

The textbook is Business Data Networks and Telecommunications, fourth edition, by Raymond R. Panko.  ISBN is #0130359149.  We will also use TCP/IP for Windows 2000 by Houde and Hoffman.  ISBN is #0130281603.  Both texts will be needed for the course.  The website for the course is http://eden.creighton.edu/mis470, and the Panko website is located at http://www.prenhall.com/panko.  Check our course website’s News and Views section daily for course information.  You will also need to subscribe to our class listserve, MIS470@creighton.edu. 

You will also need a Creighton University email account, a Grackle account, 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.  

Contact Information

I am a Creighton staff member, and my office is located in BA 112A.  I am at work 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 1.5 megabytes in size.  If you wish to email larger attachments, please email them to terry@terrybegley.com.  When you email, please use a subject line with the words MIS470 in the title so I can identify the message in my inbox easier.

 Summary

This course provides an introduction to the concepts and terminology in data communication, networks, network design and distributed information systems.  These topics include equipment, protocols and architectures, transmission alternatives, the communication environment, regulatory issues, and network pricing and management.  A combination of lectures, discussions, presentations and student projects will be used to understand the dynamic field of data communications and issues surrounding it.

 Assignments

We will have four individual and several group assignments.  These will vary according to the topics being covered.   Most of the group assignments will be hands-on work with networking in the class room.

Tech Tips and News

There is always something new and exciting in the technology field.  Twice during the course 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.

Quizzes

There will be a total of ten quizzes.  A quiz cannot be made up under any circumstances.  Quizzes may be short answer, true/false, matching or multiple choice.  They may be given out on paper, assigned via email or on a web page.   If the quiz is a take-home quiz handed out in class, and you are not in class on the day that the quiz is assigned, you may not make up the quiz.  Xerox copies or scanned copies of the quiz are not acceptable.  At the end of the semester, each student will receive one “bonus” quiz grade.  If you miss a quiz, for whatever reason, this will make it up.  If you complete all the quizzes, this will be an extra set of points for you.

Grading and Grading Scale

The student is required to take notice of where he or she stands in regards to their performance and attendance in this class. If special needs arise, or their is a problem with the students attendance, or grade, the student is responsible for contacting the professor to discuss those concerns, in as timely a manner is as reasonable. Students may contact me by any of the methods listed earlier at any time. Email and telephone voicemail are available 24 hours a day. Failure on the part of the student to proceed under these guidelines, or to violate any rules set out in this syllabus, or in the Student Handbook, including those dealing with academic honesty, may result in a lowering of the students grade, or a grade of F or AF, at the discretion of the professor.

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 various coursework are given below:

 Make-Up and Late Policy

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 only exceptions to the late policy are if the University is closed due to severe weather (and must be announced on the CU weather hotline).  If there are major network or machine problems, assignment dates will be adjusted for the length of the outage.  These outages must be announced on the CU site http://itnotices.creighton.edu or at their recorded announcement line at 280-1116. 

 Attendance Policy

Please note that all students are expected to attend every class session on time.    Students are responsible for the material covered each class time, and missed notes, handouts and URL's should be obtained from another student who was in class that day.  In the case of severe weather closings and cancellations, call the Creighton Weather Hotline at 280-5800.

 Course Outline and Assignments

 You will notice that there are plenty of blank dates listed below.  This is due to the nature of the course.  I will announce the class topics on our class website.