BA271 - Information Technology in Business
Spring Term, 2005
This class teaches how to use a computer as a partner in everyday managerial
tasks like preparing presentations, building websites, or managing transactions.
To do well, you will need to practice these activities on a computer and you
will have to show us first-rate computer-usage skills combined with an ability
to think clearly and write well.
Announcements:
May 20th: I’ve spent a good share of my time since Wednesday evening
looking at database queries. I’ve opened every query written by students during
the Query Quiz, determined an appropriate score, and wrote comments about how
the query functioned. I used a bit of automated support to do this, but mostly
it required me to look carefully at how each query was written and come to a
judgment about whether it worked correctly, and if not, what was wrong.
 As you can see on
the graph to the right, student performance was not uniform: some students wrote
four perfect queries; other students appear clueless. I’ve spent some quiet time
thinking about this collective result. Many students are struggling with
learning how to write queries. Ultimately, I do not care about the timing of
when you learn to write queries. That is, I will be quite happy if you show me
on the final exam that you have this skill, and I will not want to penalize you
because you got off to a poor start on the Query Quiz.
The final exam will have four queries of similar difficulty and complexity as
the Query Quiz. If your score on the four final exam queries is higher than your
score on the Query Quiz, then I will replace your Query Quiz score with the
score from the final exam. On the other hand, if for some strange reason, your
score on the final exam queries is lower than your score on the Query Quiz, then
I will leave your Query Quiz score unadjusted. I will use simple MAX function in
the Excel grade book to implement this policy.
If you have read carefully so far, you should understand I am trying to give
you every incentive to become competent at writing queries. No matter how poorly
you did on the Query Quiz, you can replace your original Query Quiz score by
doing well on the final exam. This makes it critical to master the process of
writing basic queries reliably.
Your first step should be to determine what when wrong (if anything) on the
Query Quiz. Begin by opening the email message I sent you about your Query Quiz
score, and read my comments about your queries. Then, if you didn’t get a
perfect score on the Query Quiz, use the following links to determine what went
wrong and how to fix it.
Learning how to write basic queries is an important skill. Obviously, it will
be easier to learn this skill if you are bright and have a good background in
math. But the main factor I’ve found in whether people learn how to write
reliable queries is practice. The more queries you write (and then check to see
if they function as expected), the better you will become at writing queries.
I’ve adjusted the class schedule to spend next Wednesday afternoon in Bexell
324 writing basic queries. Feel free to skip this day if you earned a perfect
score on the Query Quiz. But if your score was 30 points or less, you should
come to class prepared to practice writing queries.
May 12, 2005: Yesterday's case of food poisoning is now history, and I
am feeling much better. I want to apologize about missing class -- that is the
first time I have missed a regularly scheduled class in at least ten years. Here
is a schedule that I believe will help put things back on track.
First and most important: the best thing you can to do prepare for next
Wednesday's Query Quiz is to write a lot of practice queries. The more time you
spend with
Sections 5 through 14 of the practice Query Quizzes, the better.
- Friday afternoon from 1 to 5 p.m.: Serina Roush (from 1 to 3) and Melissa
Wadley from (2 to 5) will hold a help session in Bexell 324.
- Monday afternoon from 1 to 5:30 p.m.: another help session in Bexell 324.
- Monday at 6 p.m.: I will review the sort of mistakes and bloopers that
students have made on earlier query quizzes. This should be a good lecture to
attend.
- Access #2's due date will be postponed from Tuesday at 10 a.m. to Tuesday
at 10 p.m.
- Wednesday's query quiz will proceed as planned.
May 11, 2005: Today's class
is cancelled -- my stomach has decided to act up in a major way. Please read the
note below about Friday's help session. In addition, I will be in Bexell 324
from 1 to 5:40 p.m. on Monday for an extended help session about query writing.
-- Dave Sullivan
May 11, 2005:
No regular class on Friday!
(Compensates for the two-hour midterm exam.) Instead, there will be a help
session in Bexell 324 from 2 to 5 p.m. If you are used to coming to class at 1
p.m., please note the 2 p.m. start time.
May 10, 2005:
I finished grading the
multiple-choice portion of the midterm exam, and I've sent everyone a
"personalized email" about their score on that portion of the exam. This page
shows the midterm exam's
multiple-choice questions and their answers.
May 6, 2005:
We finished
grading the Producer Tutorials, and I sent everyone a "personalized" email
message with their scores. This announcement is a request for feedback about why
so many of this term's students did not do the Producer Tutorial activity.
I first noticed
this issue when my grading assistant mentioned more people than usual did not
complete this assignment. I found the comment disturbing, so I searched by hand
to see if somehow my automatic harvesting method did not capture everyone’s
work, or whether people consistently misplaced their Producer movie. After a
bunch of looking around the Cob-storage file server, I concluded roughly 25
percent of the class simply did not do this assignment. This is a significantly
higher portion than in prior terms, and it has left me confused. Have I done
something to make this activity seem imposing, optional, or unfriendly? Has 25
percent of the class just caught spring fever and decided to take a break from
class activities? Any guidance you can give me about these issues will be
helpful to my understanding about how to proceed.
As for other
activities, I am personally grading all the midterm exams, and I expect to
complete that task next Tuesday. It will talk roughly a week to compete looking
at all the good work everyone did for their final website projects.
May 4, 2005: For reasons that I do not entirely understand, I am
grading all the midterm exams myself. As of Wednesday afternoon, I am about 60
percent of the way through checking all the websites, Producer presentations,
and PowerPoint slides. I hope to be finished by Friday. -- Dave Sullivan
April 25, 2005: One of your colleagues asks good questions about the
midterm exam:
"Although this [practice] exam seemed like it would be a lot of work for
the time allowed, it only took me about an hour to complete the exam (I think
it is correct, although I may have made a few small errors). I actually liked
this exam, the instructions were specific enough that I knew what to do, but
it wasn’t too much work for the time allowed. (The BA131 midterm was hard to
finish in the allotted time, I really appreciate that you give us two hours
instead of one).
"I had a couple questions though: Are we going to be allowed to use our
notes that we took on paper, during lecture and lab? And will the actual
midterm be more specific with file names? Because it never actually said what
to save the producer instructions as.
My answer: You may use the BA271 website or any handwritten notes to
help you remember how to complete the computing tasks. You may not use other
people to help you. I will do my best to be specific about what to do and where
to store files without being overly wordy -- which is a difficulty tradeoff to
meet. If you have questions about what you are supposed to do,
please ask me during the exam. I will want to be very helpful when asked that
sort of question. I am less helpful -- but hopefully still friendly -- when
asked how to complete a well described and clearly understood task.
April 25, 2005: This week's schedule is a bit unusual. To review:
- April 27th, Wednesday afternoon: Midterm review
- April 29th, Friday afternoon: help sessions – no regular class.
Compensates for next Monday’s midterm.
- May 2nd, Monday morning or afternoon: midterm! Take this in the
basement computer labs.
- May 2nd, Monday evening: regular lecture will begin studying Access and
database
 April
8, 2005: I finished grading the Prerequisite Exam, and I used a mail-merge
process to send everyone a "personalized" email message about their score. If
you want to compare your score with the scores of other people in the class,
click on the small graph image to the right.
April 4, 2005, part 2: I made several changes to Week 5 and Week 6 in
both Lecture Schedule and
Graded Activities pages. I made these
changes because Ray Tanner's BA131 class will be giving a midterm exam in the
basement when we were originally scheduled to have our midterm exam.
April 4, 2005, part 1: We have our first
Fluffy Spreadsheet Competition winner.
Bryan Jordan completed the task in 2:29 seconds as shown in
this video that he recorded. His entry broke
the old speed record by almost 30 seconds.
March 28, 2005:
I will use this web page to make announcements throughout the term.
Please check this page whenever you arrive at the BA271 website. You are
responsible for checking for new announcements at least once a week.
Opening activities: Begin by reading the course
syllabus and the other top-level web pages for the BA271 website. These
pages explain the course structure and have many ideas to help you make the
class a success.
- Spend time examining this website. Become comfortable with its
organization, read the rules in the syllabus, look at prior exams and
assignments, and think about my suggestions for "How to Succeed". Read the
rest of this page carefully.
- Learn about the College of Business computer systems by reading these
Computer Support pages
-
Accounts Overview -- How to use the college's user accounts,
email boxes, and file storage locations, and understanding business versus
ONID accounts.
-
Email -- How to use the college's Exchange email system or
the university's ONID email system, and how to forward email from one system
to another.
-
File Storage --How to store files or create web pages.
-
Remote File Access -- How to reach the college's file server
from off campus.
- Make sure you feel comfortable using the college's email system. I will
periodically send email to your College of Business mailbox.
- Your mailbox's formal name is Username@bus.oregonstate.edu, where
Username
is replaced with your seven or eight digit code that you use to log onto the
college's network.
- If you do not plan on checking this mailbox frequently, you should learn
how to forward messages automatically from it to the mailbox that you
actually check for incoming mail (such as a hotmail account or your
university-provided ORST mailbox).
- The college offers two ways to check your email:
- Within Bexell hall, I recommend using Microsoft Outlook. This email
client provides the best features, but it only works reliably within the
building.
- If you are somewhere else, then you should go to the
College of Business home page and
click on Web Mail.
- I sent everyone registered for BA271 a "Welcome to BA271" message on Monday, March 28t. Verify that you
received this message. If you have difficulty finding and reading the
"Welcome to BA271" message, make sure you attend a help session, drop by
my
office, or send me an email message. Taking this class without being
connected to email properly would be like wearing sunglasses while driving
at night.
| 
