Course Description:
CS 490: Information Systems Management
The integration of business and technical considerations in the design, implementation and management of information systems. Topics include: IS planning and development; business, management, executive, and strategic information systems, including case studies of selected large- scale systems; decision support systems; end-user training and development; systems security, disaster planning and recovery. Practical examples of information systems in industry.
Dave's Comments:
Teaching Evaluations:
Number of Respondents: 23 / 41 (56%)
| Evaluate the organization and coherence of the lectures. |
| Excellent | Good | Satisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Very poor | No opinion |
| 10 | 8 | 4 | | | 1 |
| 43% | 35% | 17% | | | 4% |
| At what level were the instructor's explanations aimed? |
| Too high | Somewhat too high | Just right | Somewhat too low | Too low | No opinion |
| 1 | 1 | 19 | | | 1 |
| 5% | 5% | 86% | | | 5% |
| Evaluate the instructor's treatment of students' questions. |
| Excellent | Good | Satisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Very poor | No opinion |
| 15 | 8 | | | | |
| 65% | 35% | | | | |
| Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's visual presentation (blackboard, overheads, etc.). |
| Excellent | Good | Satisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Very poor | No opinion |
| 8 | 10 | 4 | | | |
| 36% | 45% | 18% | | | |
| Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's oral presentation. |
| Excellent | Good | Satisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Very poor | No opinion |
| 13 | 9 | | | | |
| 59% | 41% | | | | |
| Was the instructor available for help outside of class? |
| Always | Most of the time | Often enough | Not often enough | Never | I did not seek help |
| 9 | 4 | 1 | | | 9 |
| 39% | 17% | 4% | | | 39% |
| Did you find the course interesting? |
| Very Interesting | Interesting | Not interesting | No opinion |
| 6 | 10 | 6 | 1 |
| 26% | 43% | 26% | 4% |
| Evaluate the overall effectiveness of the instructor as a teacher. |
| Excellent | Good | Satisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Very poor | No opinion |
| 11 | 9 | 1 | | | |
| 52% | 43% | 5% | | | |
| What proportion of lectures did you attend in this course? |
| 90-100% | 75-90% | 50-75% | 25-50% | < 25% |
| 18 | 4 | 1 | | |
| 78% | 17% | 4% | | |
| Was the assigned work (assignments, projects, etc.) helpful in learning the course content? |
| Very helpful | Helpful | Not helpful | No work assigned | No opinion |
| 4 | 13 | 5 | | 1 |
| 17% | 57% | 22% | | 4% |
| Were the printed notes (if any) helpful in learning the course content? |
| Very helpful | Helpful | Not helpful | No printed course notes | No opinion |
| 3 | 5 | 1 | 12 | 2 |
| 13% | 22% | 4% | 52% | 9% |
| Was the required textbook (if any) helpful in learning the course content? |
| Very helpful | Helpful | Not helpful | No text required | No opinion |
| 3 | 9 | 9 | | 1 |
| 14% | 41% | 41% | | 5% |
| Did the course introduce an appropriate amount of new material? |
| Too much | Somewhat too much | Okay | Somewhat too little | Too little | No opinion |
| 2 | 3 | 17 | 1 | | |
| 9% | 13% | 74% | 4% | | |
| Was the amount of assigned work required for the course appropriate? |
| Too much | Somewhat too much | Okay | Somewhat too little | Too little | No opinion |
| 1 | 1 | 20 | 1 | | |
| 4% | 4% | 87% | 4% | | |
| On average, how many hours per week did you spend on this course outside of lectures? |
| 0-2 hours | 3-6 hours | 7-10 hours | 11-15 hours | > 15 hours |
| 5 | 14 | 2 | 1 | |
| 23% | 64% | 9% | 5% | |
Note: This is a complete list of comments I received, listed alphabetically to avoid bias.
| Please mention anything that you feel the instructor has done well in this course. |
- Good cop-out.
- Good sense of initiate participation and interesting discussion, humour.
- Great speaker, lively voice and nice straightforward explanations of concept. Encourages an amount of discussion far more than I've seen in any other class.
- Great teacher. Awesome energy.
- He is very flexible with the course and allows students to focus on learning topics that are interesting and relevant to them.
- I like his openness and course was fun. I like how he restructured the course towards more student's involvement and how students were responsible for material presented.
- Instructor was a fun and entertaining speaker that made the course what it was.
- Interesting presentation of the materials. Good at supporting poor discussion.
- Kept us attentive. Introduced new ways of doing assignments which was cool.
- Moved most of the work to students successfully, good job!
- Open about structure and design. Facilitated well.
- Textbook: way too expensive, not matching the value of the content/readings inside. Much of the course content is the abstraction/theory behind deep, specific social applications of computing, and more often than not, we drew significantly more meaningful, useful, insightful examples and case studies from outside of the textbook. Useless as a whole.
- The instructor was very open to the way each of us did our presentations.
- Very friendly relationship with students.
- Very open & transparent.
- Very relaxed, amusing environment. Good Jokes! Getting married in Vegas.
- You are awesome!! Great method of teaching. One would feel bad for not coming to your class.
| Please make constructive comments about anything in the instructor's technique or style that could, in your opinion, be improved. |
- A bit easier on midterms please.
- Better model understanding / less autonomy for content selection.
- Could have been a more restraining influence when people started to ramble.
- Do the second project earlier, change textbook, just give topics for the students to present.
- Give a conclusion after each chapter presentation. This gives a unified closure for each chapter.
- Little more clarity on how we are being evaluated.
- Perhaps there could be more structure in his teaching approach instead of relying on students to present the chapter material and deciding on what topics we should be responsible for.
- The student presenting style did not work and resulted in poor learning of the materials.
| What were the strong points of the course? |
- Everybody participated.
- Final project presentation.
- Great range of topics!
- Instructor was pretty chill.
- Interesting and inspiring.
- Interesting scope and perspective.
- None!
- Some good info along with all that garbage in the textbook.
- Technology camel was awesome.
- The group work was really interesting and realistic to real world groups and is good preparation for our actual careers.
- Very applicable in today's life. Very helpful in interviews.
| What were the weak points of the course? |
- Memorize a (crappy) textbook. Burn the textbook.
- Midterms!
- Some people are bad at lecturing, letting people do it maybe a mistake. Midterms should have a better outline (ex: give the topics for the short answer).
- Students teaching classes meant weak performance less learning.
- Textbook is crap. Jumps between extremely technical stuff that's useless and skimming over info? inconsistent.
- The entire course.
- The textbook was not amazing, and only because the course was based around it was the textbook helpful. If possible replace it.
- Too diverse knowledge, no practical purpose.
- Too much material and resulted in too little time to go in depth.
- Too much of the class was taught by students.
- Too much reading.
| Was the class atmosphere affected either positively or negatively by attitudes of the instructor or students, e.g., with respect to gender, race, ability, appearance? Please explain. |
- Good atmosphere.
- Good relaxed attitude.
- It was great.
- ok.
- Positive.
- The atmosphere in the class was excellent and friendly. By the end of the course we all became a little closer.
| Any other comments, e.g., class size, suitability of room, noise level, etc. |
- Class needs A/C. It was very hot in March.
- Dave was a great professor and I am glad I got to have him teach me this class in my last term before I graduate.
- Good job.
- Need a window.
While I had some IT consulting experience, I was far from an expert in the course material, and I relied heavily on the textbook. I modelled the course structure on a fourth year special topics course I had taken and really enjoyed. Each student group was assigned a chapter, and they were responsible for presenting the chapter, writing a report on the chapter, and facilitating a discussion around the material in the chapter. The results were mixed.