Work system concepts as the core for teaching Information Systems and Operations Management

The work system approach addresses the common core of Information Systems and Operations Management: • Both take a systems approach. • Both emphasize performance improvement for operational systems. • Both emphasize business processes and information. • Both recognize the importance of human knowledge and skills. The work system approach addresses the core of both fields by viewing all systems in organizations as work systems. (See references). This tutorial summarizes the latest developments in teaching undergraduate and MBA students about work systems. It will provide a set of class-tested templates. Topics include: • The work system approach: work system framework, work system snapshots, work system life cycle model • Template for work system snapshots • Template for learning about work system metrics • Sample student exercises in summarizing work systems and metrics based on situations in newspaper articles • Detailed template for a term paper analyzing a work system in an organizatio

Management as a system: creating value

Boston University School of Management publication from the 1990s about the MBA programs at BU, aimed at prospective MBA students

Information Systems Undergraduate Degree Project: Gaining a Better Understanding of the Final Year Project Module

The place of an individual project in the final year of Information Systems (IS) undergraduate degrees at UK universities is well established. In this paper we compare the final year project modules at four UK universities: the University of Brighton, the University of South Wales, University of West London and the University of Westminster. We find that the aims of the projects are similar, emphasising the application of the knowledge and skills from the taught element of their course in a complex development project, often including interactions with a real client. Although we show in this analysis that projects serve a similar purpose in the IS degree courses, the associated learning outcomes and the assessment practice varies across the institutions. We identify some gaps in the skills and abilities that are not being assessed. In further work we are planning to consult final year students undertaking their projects and their supervisors, in order to gain an understanding of how project assessment criteria are actually put to use

Lucene4IR: Developing information retrieval evaluation resources using Lucene

The workshop and hackathon on developing Information Retrieval Evaluation Resources using Lucene (L4IR) was held on the 8th and 9th of September, 2016 at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK and funded by the ESF Elias Network. The event featured three main elements: (i) a series of keynote and invited talks on industry, teaching and evaluation; (ii) planning, coding and hacking where a number of groups created modules and infrastructure to use Lucene to undertake TREC based evaluations; and (iii) a number of breakout groups discussing challenges, opportunities and problems in bridging the divide between academia and industry, and how we can use Lucene for teaching and learning Information Retrieval (IR). The event was composed of a mix and blend of academics, experts and students wanting to learn, share and create evaluation resources for the community. The hacking was intense and the discussions lively creating the basis of many useful tools but also raising numerous issues. It was clear that by adopting and contributing to most widely used and supported Open Source IR toolkit, there were many benefits for academics, students, researchers, developers and practitioners - providing a basis for stronger evaluation practices, increased reproducibility, more efficient knowledge transfer, greater collaboration between academia and industry, and shared teaching and training resources