Course Schedule: Spring 2004

Three hours of lecture per week for one-half of the semester. Project planning and scheduling, process design, project management and coordination. Analysis of information needs, specification of system requirements, analysis of alternatives, design of alternatives. Quantitative methods and tools for analysis and decision making. Design, implementation, and evaluation of a project.

This is part of the fourth required course for all Masters students in the School of Information Management and Systems, and it is open for enrollment only to students in the School.

The course provides a general introduction to information and knowledge management in organizations, including:

1. An introduction to tools and methods for the analysis and design of information systems.
2. The management of the process of information system analysis and design, that is, project management.

One primary objective of the course is for the student to conduct an analysis of an information system and, if appropriate, design an alternate system. This system may be a manual procedure in need of improvement, a manual system that needs automation, automated procedures that need improvement, or an analytic study of an existing system. This analysis will be accompanied by a class presentation of its results. Projects are to be done on an individual or group basis.

The course provides the student with the tools to conduct the study. Among the topics covered in the lectures and readings are the process of identifying and selecting projects, project initiation, systems requirements determination, system data collection, interviewing and questionnaire development, workflow analysis and design, data flow diagramming, statistical and cost analysis, and the implementation and evaluation of systems. It is up to the student to find a project for the course. The instructor will provide guidance. The break between semesters is a good time to begin looking for organizations and/or systems that need analysis and/or improvement.

Part of the course is devoted to the use of Microsoft Project to develop a schedule of the activities for the project and to supply updated schedules to the instructor during the semester.

In addition to the analysis/design project, there will be additional assignments in specific management areas and to develop skills on the topics covered in the lectures. Among these assignments are the use of statistical analysis tools, spreadsheet programs, and dataflow modeling tools.

This course explores the relationship between organizations and the development and use of information technology and systems. It presumes that organizational models reflect the opportunities created by information technology and the changing institutional context. We will compare the implications of different organizational models for knowledge and information flows, learning within and between organizations, and learning between organizations and their environment. Case materials will draw from private and public sector organizations as well as professional, educational and other non-profit organizations. We will devote special attention to organizational transformations associated with new models of innovation and the “network” or knowledge economy.

The course is recommended for MIMS students, SIMS Ph.D. students, and graduate students in other departments with an interest in the relationship between information technology and the transformation of organizations.

Three hours of lecture per week. User interface design and human-computer interaction. Examination of alternative design. Tools and methods for design and development. Human- computer interaction. Methods for measuring and evaluating interface quality.

This course covers the design, prototyping, and evaluation of user interfaces to computers which is often called Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). It is loosely based on course CS1 described in the ACM SIGCHI Curricula for Human-Computer Interaction (Association for Computing Machinery, 1992).

HCI covers many topics including:

1. Human capabilities (e.g., visual and auditory perception, memory, mental models, and interface metaphors);
2. Interface technology (e.g., input and output devices, interaction styles, and common interface paradigms); and,
3. Interface design methods (e.g., user-centered design, prototyping, and design principles and rules), and interface evaluation (e.g., software logging, user observation, benchmarks and experiments).

This material is covered through lectures, reading, discussions, homework assignments, and a course project. This course differs from CS 160 primarily in two ways:

1. There is an emphasis on interfaces for information technology applications; and,
2. There is less emphasis on programming and system development, although some simple prototyping (for example, in visual basic or using JAVA GUI development tools) may be required. (CS 160 has a big programming project.)

Three hours of lecture per week. Theories and methods for searching and retrieval of text and bibliographic information. Analysis of relevance and utility. Statistical and linguistic methods for automatic indexing and classification. Boolean and probabilistic approaches to indexing, query formulation, and output ranking. Filtering methods. Measures of retrieval effectiveness and retrieval experimentation methodology.

This course is intended to prepare you to understand the underlying theories and algorithms of advanced information retrieval systems and to introduce the methodology for the design and evaluation of information retrieval systems. The course will introduce you to the major types of information retrieval systems, the different theoretical foundations underlying these systems, and the methods and measures that can be used to evaluate them. The course will focus on the both the theoretical aspects of information retrieval design and evaluation, and will also consider the practical aspects of how these theories have been implemented in actual systems. These topics will be examined through readings, discussion, hands-on experience using various information retrieval systems, and through participation in evaluation of different retrieval algorithms on various test collections. The prerequisite for the course is INFOSYS 202, though this may be waived with the consent of instructor. A good familiarity with computers and programming is highly desirable.

The design and presentation of digital information. Use of graphics, animation, sound, visualization software, and hypermedia in presenting information to the user. Methods of presenting complex information to enhance comprehension and analysis. Incorporation of visualization techniques into human-computer interfaces.

Computer visualization is used widely in scientific and engineering disciplines to help people understand the systems they study, but has only recently begun to be applied to general information. This course will focus on the use of visualization to enhance comprehension and analysis of structured information such as text collections, networked systems like the Web, work processes, etc. For examples of what computerized visualization is see: http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/casa/martin/atlas/atlas.html

Much of the relevant work is new and still being researched. For this reason, many of the lectures will be given by guest speakers with expertise in specialized subareas.

Readings and lectures will cover basic visualization principles and tools, and relevant work in the new field of information visualization. Students will gain hands-on experience with existing tools.

All students are expected to participate in class discussion, write a short survey paper or design a graphical presentation, and do a project. The project will consist either of creating or enhancing a visualization system or technique, or conducting a user study to evaluate a system or technique.

This course is targeted to both SIMS and computer science students. Students must be willing to read papers that contain some advanced math and must be willing to augment existing programs (using either a scripting language or a standard programming language).

Note: this course is now 243: Document Engineering and Information Architecture.

This three-unit course introduces a new discipline of 'Document Engineering' for specifying, designing, and deploying the electronic documents that serve as the interfaces to e-business applications and web-based services. It is natural to conceptualize the business relationships between companies as document exchanges, and XML, with its ability to define formal structural and semantic definitions for electronic documents, has rapidly emerged as a key enabling technology as e-business takes hold on the Internet. After introducing XML syntax, styles and transformations, and schema languages, a substantial part of the course is devoted to teaching students practical skills for designing and implementing the documents that enable e-business transactions and applications. These skills include: developing information requirements, analyzing existing documents, identifying and organizing document components, implementing XML schemas, modeling business processes, specifying business processes and service interfaces using XML schemas, and'choreographing' complex chains of document exchanges for multi-company business activities.

The course also introduces and evaluates the relevant XML standards, specifications, and software architectures for the design, development, and deployment of document-centric e-business applications, e-marketplaces, and web services. It explains the co-evolution of document-centric e-business models and their enabling architectures and computational environments (it has been said that 'XML gives Java something to do'). It interleaves technology issues with management and business concerns, such as selecting a standards strategy, assessing an organization's readiness for document engineering, and meeting the legal, policy, and interoperability challenges within and between electronic trading communities.

About the Instructor

Bob Glushko is an Engineering Fellow at Commerce One, which provides software and services for electronic marketplaces. Before becoming an Engineering Fellow in November 2000, Glushko was Director, Document Engineering and Director, Advanced Technology, responsible for Commerce One's XML architecture and technical standards efforts. He joined Commerce One in January 1999 when it acquired Veo Systems, which pioneered the use of XML for e-commerce and which he co-founded in 1997. Prior to Veo Systems, Glushko co-founded two companies specializing in SGML-based electronic publishing. He has worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories and the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie-Mellon University. He has an undergraduate degree from Stanford, an MS (Software Engineering) from the Wang Institute, and a Ph.D. (cognitive psychology) from UC San Diego.

This course is intended to provide the core skills needed for the identification of opportunities that can lead to successful, entrepreneurial high technology ventures, regardless of the individual's "home" skill set, whether technical or managerial. We examine in depth the approaches most likely to succeed for entrepreneurial companies as a function of markets and technologies. Emphasis is placed on the special requirements for creating and executing strategy in a setting of rapid technological change and limited resources. This course is open to both MBA and Engineering students (who enroll through the College of Engineering), and is particularly suited for those who anticipate founding or operating technology companies.

This course complements IS 243 (Document Engineering) with more extensive coverage of XML technologies and the use of those technologies to build applications. The course will cover in depth XML syntax and processing, Unicode, XPath and XSLT, XML Schema, and processing models for XML. It will also cover using XML technologies to build web-based applications. Some experience using Java (e.g. IS 255) will be helpful but is not required.

There is a one credit option of this course. For that 1 credit, no final project will be required and subset of the assignments will be requried.

Required Texts:

1. Definitive XML Schema, Priscilla Walmsley, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-065567-8
2. Beginning XSLT, Jeni Tennison, APress Books, ISBN 1-59059-260-3 (see http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=332)

Recommended Text:

1. Java & XML, Brett McLughlin, O'Reilly, ISBN 0-596-00197-5

The rise and fall of the high-technology industries of the 1990s reflect broader changes in markets, production organization, and business models, as well as the operation of government policies. These broader changes, which include but go well beyond the Internet revolution itself, suggest that the industrial economy is being fundamentally transformed by the diffusion of innovations in technology and business models across the industrial and industrializing economies. At the same time, these changes cannot be understood without a deeper examination of the factors that created competitive advantage at the national level in many of these industries during the previous three decades. This course explores the broad changes in “who is winning, who is losing, and why” in global markets for high-technology goods ranging from semiconductors to commercial aircraft.

This course seeks to make sense of, inter alia, the decline and prospective recovery of U.S. high-technology industries, the evolution of innovation and technology strategies and policies in Western Europe and Asia, the historic and current roles of governments in shaping markets for high-technology goods, and the impact on business strategies of recent developments in early-stage capital markets. Our general approach views technological innovation and competition as dynamic processes that reflect previous choices made by firms and governments. Modern technologies develop in markets that are international in scope, often imperfectly competitive, and subject to influence by a variety of economic and political stakeholders. We will use an eclectic mix of theoretical, historical, and practical perspectives throughout the course in examining these issues, although no special familiarity with any of these is assumed. From time to time, we will be joined by venture capitalists, corporate executives, and technologists engaged in global high-technology markets for discussion of these issues.

CLASS FORMAT: Seminar with cases, discussions, lectures and guest speakers.

REQUIRED READINGS: All students should purchase the Class Reader which will include the required HBS case studies and other articles.

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Students will be expected to undertake one substantial research project, in cross-disciplinary teams, requiring both traditional and on-line research skills. Each team will present briefly to the class as a whole. The grade will be based on the general in-class participation and the final research report.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: Charles C. Wu is currently a Lecturer in the Management of Technology Program with over 20 years of pragmatic experience in High Technology and 14 years representing foreign organizations. He is currently Managing Director and Founder of the Panasonic Digital Concepts Center, Matsushita's Technology Alliances, Venture Capital and Incubator Organization. Prior to Panasonic, Charles was the first US professional at Vertex Venture Holdings, the Venture Capital arm of Singapore Technologies. Charles has served on boards of 11 public and private companies assisting them with their international business relationships and strategy. Charles has a MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and an BS in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

See the MOT site for details. 

This is a Related Course of the MOT program, usually taught in Spring.

Sustainable Design, Manufacturing and Management as exercised by the enterprise is a poorly understood idea and one that is not intuitively connected to business value or engineering practice.

This course will provide the basis for understanding (1) what comprises sustainable practices in for-profit enterprises, (2) how to practice and measure continuous improvement using sustainability thinking, techniques and tools for product and manufacturing process design, and (3) the techniques for and value of effective communication of sustainability performance to internal and external audiences.

Material in the course will be supplemented by speakers with diverse backgrounds in corporate sustainability, environmental consulting, and academia.

Discussions of papers in the reader including case studies will be used to illustrate topics. A final class project will be required (for those registered for 3 units), with students working individually or in small groups. Cross functional groups including both engineering and MBA students are encouraged. Class projects will apply the analysis techniques covered in this course to design and develop environmentally mindful products or processes or analyze policies that lead to environmental improvements. Interaction with industry and collection of real-world data will be encouraged.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
David Dornfeld received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976 in the area of Production Engineering. He joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley in the Mechanical Engineering Department in 1977 and is presently Professor of Manufacturing Engineering. Since July 1, 1999 he holds the Will C. Hall Family Chair in Engineering. He is presently Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Studies in the College of Engineering.In 1982 and 1992 he was Directeur de Recherche Associe, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines de Paris, Paris and Invited Professor, Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Arts et Metiers- ENSAM, Paris, respectively.

Dr. Dornfeld's research activities are in several fields of manufacturing engineering and flexible automation: acoustic emission monitoring and analysis of manufacturing processes; burr formation and edge finishing (leads an industry consortium supporting work in this area); precision manufacturing with specialization on chemical mechanical planarization for semiconductor manufacturing; green manufacturing; and intelligent sensors and signal processing for process monitoring and optimization. He has published over 270 papers in these fields, contributed chapters to several books and has four patents based on his research work. He is a consultant on sensors, manufacturing productivity and automation and process modeling and the associated intellectual property issues.

Professor Dornfeld is a Fellow and an active member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), He was the recipient of the ASME Blackall Machine Tool and Gage Award in 1986. He is a Fellow and past-Director of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) and a recipient of the 2004 SME Fredrick W. Taylor Research Medal, member of Japan Society of Precision Engineering (JSPE), American Society of Precision Engineering (ASPE), and Materials Research Society (MRS) . He is past-President of the Board of Directors , North American Manufacturing Research Institute (NAMRI/SME). He is an Active Member of the CIRP (International Institution for Production Engineering Research) where he serves as member of the governing Council and is past-Chair of the Scientific Technical Committee on Cutting.