Introduction |Objectives |Class Organization |Assessment |Project

Assessment

There are more than ten occasions to assess progress in the course: four exercises, analytical cases, project discussions, written examinations, and the final project report. Performance will be weighted as follows:

Evaluation mechanism	Weighting	Comments
Class participation	20%	Your questions in class really matter. Intelligent interest really helps. Talking for air time really hurts.
Exercises	10%	For familiarity with Access95. All must be completed: see notes below.
Case analyses	10%	We will analyze cases at several different levels of sophistication. See notes below.
Mid-term exam	15%	You have a choice here. See below.
Prototyping project	30%	The project is the core of the course. It will affect your participation and your results.
Final exam	15%	The final exam is tightly integrated with your project. It will not require additional preparation other than the project.
Total	100%

About workload

Because of its project focus, this course tends to be back-end loaded in workload and performance assessment. Because it involves exposure to and extensive use of several (potentially) new software packages, required work can appear frustratingly non-productive, especially at the start of the term. If this remark sounds cryptic you will begin to understand after you spend your first few hours trying to get some aspect of Microsoft Access to work and have nothing to show for your effort at the end of that time.

The course is designed to push you to make considerable progress in learning and applying new software tools, whatever your level of past experience: those of you who have worked in systems prototyping before know that this is one of the features of using information systems to support process redesign. In other words, you may find yourself learning new concepts and new tools at the same time, and the combined effect can be somewhat disorienting.

Should this (admittedly uncomfortable) situation arise, please be aware that we are doing it for a reason: we want you to move down the learning curve now so that when it really matters (e.g., when you are not in school but in a current business situation) you can act with speed, accuracy, and precision. Please use the next three months as an opportunity to experiment, to gain as much knowledge of potential pitfalls as you can, so that you don't make disabling mistakes when it really counts.

Please use your time wisely: if you are clearly making no progress with a particular operation in software and you have tried for a meaningful amount of time, get help. My office extension is 239-5585. Call me. If we can't solve the problem over the phone we will make a time to get together in person.

The exercises

We will complete four exercises to build a common base for understanding database structures and software such as Access95. As with most computer-based projects, these exercises are of the all-or-nothing variety: i.e., you have to produce acceptable work just to finish them. For this reason, trying to force major grading distinctions on relatively small changes in final results seems pretty pointless. Consequently exercises are graded on a check/no check basis. I will not be assigning letter grades to them.

Nonetheless, don't be fooled: finishing these exercises is important, because they demonstrate to all concerned that you know enough Access to be able to develop database prototypes. This is one major objective of this course.

This grading scheme (e.g., 10% for completing all the exercises, but all must be completed) is intended to accomplish three things:

• Building a shared base. If you are new to Access, to encourage you to spend the time that you need to learn the software. The 10% is intended to reduce the grading risk you may feel about these exercises, so that you can actually play with the software and maybe even learn something. The requirement that you hand in all exercises is to convince you to spend the time.
• Extending an existing base. If you an Access professional, perhaps the exercises, since they encourage you to integrate Access with other software, will give you an opportunity to try things you otherwise would not have done. On the other hand, if you are an Access professional, what are you doing in this course? If you feel truly underutilized, please call me (239-5585) and we will work out an arrangement that better suits your interests. One option is to help your fellow students (e.g., all of us) to understand Access better.
• Learning how to learn software. Like many professionals, we will all be learning new software for the rest of our lives, and learning how to learn Access is a good place to start. So whatever your level of experience with applications development, we're interested in what you gained from the exercises - at very least with the questions they generated.

Case analyses

Unlike some courses, we will be analyzing a smaller number of cases in more depth than usual. You may have noted on the syllabus that there are three cycles of analysis planned for the MAG Services case, for example. This is because we will be working with this material at three levels of sophistication. The levels build on one another and may take some time work through. The schedule is intended to encourage us to take the time. Any work you do on MAG, for example, will be to your benefit later in the course.

The case analyses, which include MotorMouth and MAG, are designed to assist you in understanding our approach to process analysis and design.

Midterm exam

For a mid-term grade, you may have your choice of any of the three following options. You may also choose to do one option, see how you do, and then choose to do another option later.

Choice of:

1. MAG Services 1^st- pass analysis.
   This represents a first try at understanding the process described in the MAG services case, including its specializations and dependency characteristics.
   
2. MAG Services redesign.
   This describes your analysis of the problems affecting MAG services, and what coordination strategies you would use to resolve them. Specifically, you would be expected to suggest and describe systems for doing so, indicating how they relate to the dependency dynamics suggested by your analysis.
   
3. Project draft, including analysis and redesign discussion.
   This accomplishes 1 & 2 above, but using your project as a basis for your arguments rather than the MAG services case.

Your submissions will be reviewed as if by your boss - e.g., you provide a trivially important project or discussion, you obtain a trivially important grade. That said, let's see if we can use this as an opportunity to learn something.

You may hand in your mid-term process discussion at any time between 15 October (Week 6) and 19 November (Week 11). If you wish, you may deliver a submission, ask me for informal feedback, then resubmit another option at a later date (e.g., you could try #1, see how it does, then submit #2 if you want to do better; or, if you have nothing else to do, submit #1, find out, submit #2, find out, and submit #3. In that case, you certainly would have be recognized at least for your effort - perhaps balanced by a certain lack of common sense...).