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BA271 - Information Technology in
Business
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| The Purchase Order used as the basis of last night's work sample |
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| A likely Visio-based schema for Purchase Orders. |  |
| A likely Microsoft Access-based schema for Purchase Orders. |  |
The best way to improve your writing is to spend time writing. Practice helps -- it helps a lot. You also should receive feedback about your writing and spend time carefully reading examples of good writing. I spent the entire weekend reading the essays and comments about my reactions. Please take the time to read and consider the email message I sent you about your midterm essay. I'd also like you to read and consider this essay written by one of your peers. While not perfect, it was the best essay I read this weekend.
-- Dave Sullivan
Policies for a Forestry Wiki
I searched the Internet for some information on establishing and creating appropriate wiki policies and guidelines. The first source I found was Wikipedia's Policies and Guidelines. In summary, Wikipedia states that its biggest goal is to be nothing more than an encyclopedia and that goal is possible by working to build a consensus. Wikipedia hopes to provide articles written from a neutral point of view that are cited with reliable sources of information My second find was from WikiTravel Community Policies where their goals are used to emphasize their policies and guidelines. As a travel site, their goals are to provide accurate and free information for travelers or potential travelers. They stress that the content be fair and professional.
The new forestry-oriented wiki, should have specific guidelines like WikiTravel provides as well as general policies like Wikipedia. The purpose of a world-wide forestry wiki would be to bring together forestry experts and those wishing to gain forestry knowledge. So, the polices and guidelines should include emphasis on accuracy and credibility. Any editing should be cited and the editor should be a credible source of information. A credible source could be anyone from a professor of forestry who has been involved for many years to a newcomer who has had an actual experience and wishes to share their new knowledge. The most important thing to remember about a wiki is that not all editors are there to do good so the site will have to be maintained and monitored by the owner.
Question: Are the access assignments due this Friday? (I remember you saying something about Friday in class.)
Original Answer: The first Access assignment is due on Monday at 2 p.m. -- thus, the Graded Activities page in the BA271 website is accurate ... and my memory about the Friday date was inaccurate.
Revised Answer: By popular demand, I've postponed the due date of this assignment to Wednesday, May 16th at 2 p.m.
On my reviews, people were saying that when they were on my Feedback page, and then tried to go back to the Homepage, it would take them straight to their page. Could you tell me how I would be able to fix that?
Since this is a problem many people encountered, here is my answer:
Look at the difference between these two tags:
- <a href="index.html">Home]</a>
- <a href="file:///P:/Classwork/ba271/website/application.html">Application</a>
… that I took from your website. The first hyperlink leads to a relative address; that is, it leads to a file whose location is based on the location of the web page containing the tag. The second hyperlink is absolute so it will lead to the same location regardless of where the current web page is stored. Since most people in the world do not have access to your personal drive P location, only the relative sort of hyperlink will work. Thus, to answer your first question, you should search for and remove any hyperlinks that contain absolute references.
I finished grading the Prerequisite Exam, and I've sent everyone email messages about the results. Here is a graph showing the distribution of scores on the exam:
I've sent everyone their Week 2 work sample scores. I've also updated the Student Pages -- Website Plan page with links leading to where your PowerPoint and Visio files should be for the Website Plan activity.
I am not sure how you wanted us to format the Treasure Hunt assignment. I've attached a picture of what I have done so far. Could you look at it and give me some feedback on the format? Thank you.
My reply:
- First, make sure the blue title bar at the top of the page does not say, "BA271 YOUR NAME HERE”s Treasure Hunt …"
- Next, make sure you do not list actual web addresses in your hyperlinks. For example, do not build links to www.microsoft.com, build them to Microsoft instead.
- Finally, make sure each link is embedded in a positive, first-person statement about what you have found or located. For example, you might say, “I found that Microsoft offers large hard disks for sale cheaply.
There is a unique opportunity this week to hear a speaker who is an acknowledged expert in the field of intellectual property protection. Elmer Galbi will be a guest speaker this Thursday, 4/12/2007 from 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, in Kelly Engineering Center 1003. A short Bio follows:
Elmer W. Galbi
Elmer's focus is primarily on patent matters in the computer systems and programming area. As a former patent department manager for major corporations --including IBM, Advanced Micro Devices, and Seiko Communications Systems -- Elmer brings a rich background in all aspects of IP law. He's overseen and handled patent procurement in the U.S. and overseas, and has a significant amount of experience analyzing IP portfolios for licensing and infringement. Elmer has managed interference proceedings and litigation, served as an expert witness in litigation, and served as a member of an arbitration panel.
Clients: Elmer works for industry leaders such as Cisco Technology, Inc., Cypress Semiconductor Corporation and various Seiko subsidiaries. He also works with start-up companies that are aiming to become established leaders in their technologies. His clients provide a wide array of products from computer systems and semiconductors to novelty toys.
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.
Using Email:
Oregon State University gives every student in my BA271 class at least two email accounts on two completely different email systems.
- The College of Business creates an email box for every student, faculty, and staff member associated with the college.
- The university provides everyone with an ONID (Oregon State Network ID) account that includes an email box.
- You may have other email boxes if you take forestry or science classes.
- Finally, you can sign up to use a third-party email system, such as Yahoo Mail.
Since I do not know which system you prefer to use, I must make a choice about where to send email. Until last term, I sent all email to my students via their College of Business email boxes. This made sense to me because I am a business professor. Starting with last term, I decided to send some messages to College of Business email boxes and other messages to ONID email boxes. This made sense because I wanted to encourage you to forward mail so that you do not have "dead letter" email boxes.
I do not care in the least which email system you choose to use. Here is what I care about:
- You should understand the differences among email systems.
- You should make an intelligent choice about which email system will be your primary system; that is, which email system will you actually open and use to check messages.
- You should have messages forwarded automatically to your primary system so email from me is not being delivered to a “dead letter” mailbox.
- You should be able to receive HTML-formatted messages that contain embedded images, bold text, and other formatting. The messages I send out can be quite hard to interpret if everything is displayed in a crude Courier font.
If you did not already know about your various email boxes on campus, or if you want help learning how to forward messages from one system to another — then you should read the Using Email help page in the College of Business website.
For whatever it is worth, I use my Business email box (known as sullivan@bus.oregonstate.edu) as my primary mailbox, and I have my ONID (also known as sullivda@onid.orst.edu) set to forward messages automatically to my Business mailbox.
I sent everyone registered for BA271 a "Welcome to BA271" message on Tuesday, March 27th. 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.
Note: this message was written to my Winter term students, and it discussed their first graded activity: at the end of the first Monday lecture, I asked them to fill out a 4" x 6" card with information that would introduce themselves to me. I will use the same opening activity this term ... so you may want to read and consider the following activity before attending our first lecture on April 2nd.
I spent last night and some of this morning reading all the 4" x 6" cards everyone filled out at last night's lecture. I began by placing all the cards into four different piles based on their appearance. This sorting was based on my first impression of how attractive, professional, and easy to read each card was. I found the cards varied dramatically in how visually effective they were. Some cards presented information in an engaging and clearly understandable manner -- while others gave off the opposite reaction. I then gave scores from 0 to 4 to each card based on its visual appearance.
Here are three cards that worked well (please click to enlarge). Note that I removed their names from the images to protect their personal information.
Next, I read each card. I not only wanted to learn a bit about each student, but I also wanted to evaluate the card's content. I was interested in whether the ideas were expressed clearly and were appropriate. Once again, I gave each card a score from 0 to 4 based on its content and writing quality. Since the purpose of the cards was to allow students to introduce themselves to me, I was unlikely to give any card a perfect score if it contained only general information that would apply to any instructor or colleague -- it seemed like some reference should be made to BA271 or computing.
Overall, I am happy with this activity's outcome. Preparing a well-written and attractive document in a short period of time is a very important business skill. While computers can help somewhat with alignment and printing, most of the hard work falls on the author's shoulders. I've found that with practice and feedback, people get better at this sort of task.
Please remember that this assessment is only the first of nine in-class work samples -- and only your top six scores will count toward your final grade. Some students were not in class last night, and they will have eight more chances to earn six reasonable scores.
This website was created and is maintained by
Dave Sullivan. |
Part 1: A colleague sent me this image, and I find it enough fun to
want to share it with you ...
