MIS 34070 Fall 2011 Shanker

M&IS 34070: Principles of Systems Development

Fall 2011

Murali Shanker

E-mail: mshanker@kent.edu

Phone: (330) 672-1165

Office Hours

Murali Shanker: 2:00 - 3:30, T, Th; A401 BSA

Class Times Section 001: T, Th 3:45 - 5:00, 108 BSA

Course Description

This course is about Information Systems, and a rigorous introduction to programming logic and syntax. Specifically, we will use Visual Basic 2010 as the programming language. Emphasis will be placed on both the construction and execution of programming, with attention to good programming practices.

Course Requirements

Last day to withdraw from a course: Sunday, 6 November 2011

Prerequisites: M&IS: 24056. Students attending the course who do not have the proper prerequisite risk being deregistered from the class.

Enrollment: Students have responsibility to ensure they are properly enrolled in classes. You are advised to review your official class schedule (using Student Tools on FlashLine) during the first two weeks of the semester to ensure you are properly enrolled in this class and section. Should

you find an error in your class schedule, you have until Sunday, September 11, 2011 to

correct the error. If registration errors are not corrected by this date and you continue to

attend and participate in classes for which you are not officially enrolled, you are advised now

that you will not receive a grade at the conclusion of the semester for any class in which you

are not properly registered.

Students With Disabilities: University policy 3342-3-18 requires that students with disabilities be provided reasonable accommodations to ensure their equal access to course content. If you have documented disability and require accommodations, please contact the instructor at the beginning of the semester to make arrangements for necessary classroom adjustments. Please note, you must first verify your eligibility for these through the Student Disability Services (contact 330-672-3391 or visit http://www.registrars.kent.edu/disability for more information on registration procedures).

Class Time

Class time will devoted to lectures, problem solving, and testing. As you can expect in a programming class, we will make extensive use of computers. Ensure that you have access to a computer with the requisite software.

Assessments

You will be tested in multiple ways. These include in-class and online quizzes, frequent homeworks, and a project.

Quizzes: There will be multiple quizzes for this class. Dates for the quizzes, either online or in-class, will be announced online at your Blackboard Website. It is your responsibility to ensure that you are aware of quiz times. Missed quizzes cannot be made up, and you will receive a score of 0 for any missed quiz. Each quiz may be worth a different number of points, but the total maximum points from Quizzes toward your overall grade is 30 points.

Homework Assignments: There will be multiple homework assignments. Assignments will be posted on the course website. Each assignment will have a due date, and late assignments will not be accepted. Any missed or late assignments will receive 0 points, and cannot be made up. Each assignment may be worth a different number of points, but the total maximum points from Homework Assignments toward your overall grade is 40 points.

Project: The project will be assigned in class, and due dates will be announced in class. This project will be done in groups, and will involve the student in all aspects of programming. The project will be graded at each milestone, and the final score for the project for the group will be a cumulative total of the scores at each milestone. Individual student scores for the project will depend on the final project score for the group, and peer evaluation. The project is worth 30 points toward your overall grade.

Attendance: While no attendance is taken, you are nevertheless responsible for all content, including projects and assignments, presented in class. Any missed assessments cannot be made up.

Dates and Timings: Dates for all quizzes, homeworks, and project will be posted on your course website. Please ensure you check your course website frequently for these dates. It is your responsibility to be aware of this information.

As a warning, please do not wait until the last minute to take your quizzes, or post your homework and project solutions. As you must realize in dealing with technology, several things can and will go wrong. The only condition under which I will extend the due dates is if the Blackboard server goes down on the last available day. Any problems with your computer will not change the due date. As such, it is your responsibility to ensure that you complete the tasks in a timely fashion. You will get zero (0) points for all missed assessments. Please ensure that your assessments (quizzes, homeworks, and project) have been graded correctly, and notify the instructor immediately of any concerns. Specifically, you will have one week after the scores are posted to notify the instructor of any errors.

Extra Credit: Periodically, you may be given additional homework / quizzes in class or online, each of which will count as extra credit towards your final grade. As missed quizzes / homeworks cannot be made up, it is in your best interest to attend class regularly.

Academic dishonesty: Cheating means to misrepresent the source, nature, or other conditions of your academic work (e.g., tests, papers, cases, online quizzes) so as to get undeserved credit. The use of the intellectual property of others without giving them appropriate credit is a serious academic offense. It is the University's policy that cheating or plagiarism result in receiving a failing grade for the work or course. Repeat offenses result in dismissal from the University.

Class Materials

Book: The book for our class is "Programming in Visual Basic 2010," by Bradley and Millspaugh. There are several options for getting this book, as a paperback, or as an ebook. Listed below are a few:

Finally, given this is mostly a programming class, it is also possible that you can do well using only the help system in the software, and using other books as references. In which case, you might not need the book at all. The choice is yours.

Software: We will be using Visual Basic 2010 for this class. You can get your free version from https://www.dreamspark.com/Default.aspx. If you do buy a new book, please do not use the software that comes with the book. Use the one you get from the above site.

Grades

The maximum points for this course is 100 (30 quizzes + 40 homeworks + 30 project). The grading scale for this class is as follows

Grade	A	A-	B+	B	B-	C+	C	C-	D+	D
Minimum Score Required	90	86	83	80	76	73	70	66	63	60

None of the homeworks, quizzes, or projects, can be made up. You will receive a score of zero (0) for any missed assessment.
Please print and keep a copy of all your assessments. That will be the proof I will require if there are any disputes about test scores.
You will have one week after receiving the score for each assessment to request any corrections.

How to Access and Use Your Course Web Site

To ensure that the content appears correctly on your browser, please use a standards-compliant browser like Mozilla Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/) rather than Internet Explorer.
The central website to access your course is through Blackboard 9. This is the new course management software for Kent State University. You can access your course in two ways.

Log into Flashline. Click on Student Tools and Courses tab, and then Blackboard Single Signon. Next, choose Log in to LEARN.
Or, you can log in by going directly to https://learn.kent.edu. Log in with your Kent username and password.

Do This First

Download and install Visual Basic 2010 from https://www.dreamspark.com/Default.aspx.

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