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: 21 / 25 (84%)
| Evaluate the organization and coherence of the lectures. |
| Excellent | Good | Satisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Very poor | No opinion |
| 10 | 10 | 1 | | | |
| 48% | 48% | 5% | | | |
| At what level were the instructor's explanations aimed? |
| Too high | Somewhat too high | Just right | Somewhat too low | Too low | No opinion |
| 2 | 19 | | | |
| 10% | 90% | | | |
| Evaluate the instructor's treatment of students' questions. |
| Excellent | Good | Satisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Very poor | No opinion |
| 17 | 4 | | | | |
| 81% | 19% | | | | |
| Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's visual presentation (blackboard, overheads, etc.). |
| Excellent | Good | Satisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Very poor | No opinion |
| 4 | 13 | 4 | | | |
| 19% | 62% | 19% | | | |
| Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's oral presentation. |
| Excellent | Good | Satisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Very poor | No opinion |
| 17 | 4 | | | | |
| 81% | 19% | | | | |
| 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 |
| 6 | 1 | | | | 13 |
| 30% | 5% | | | | 65% |
| Did you find the course interesting? |
| Very Interesting | Interesting | Not interesting | No opinion |
| 6 | 14 | 1 | |
| 29% | 67% | 5% | |
| Evaluate the overall effectiveness of the instructor as a teacher. |
| Excellent | Good | Satisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Very poor | No opinion |
| 18 | 3 | | | | |
| 86% | 14% | | | | |
| What proportion of lectures did you attend in this course? |
| 90-100% | 75-90% | 50-75% | 25-50% | < 25% |
| 20 | 1 | | | |
| 95% | 5% | | | |
| Was the assigned work (assignments, projects, etc.) helpful in learning the course content? |
| Very helpful | Helpful | Not helpful | No work assigned | No opinion |
| 5 | 12 | 3 | | 1 |
| 24% | 57% | 14% | | 5% |
| Were the printed notes (if any) helpful in learning the course content? |
| Very helpful | Helpful | Not helpful | No printed course notes | No opinion |
| 1 | | 17 | 3 |
| 5% | | 81% | 14% |
| Was the required textbook (if any) helpful in learning the course content? |
| Very helpful | Helpful | Not helpful | No text required | No opinion |
| 14 | 5 | 1 | | |
| 70% | 25% | 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 | 19 | | | |
| 10% | 90% | | | |
| Was the amount of assigned work required for the course appropriate? |
| Too much | Somewhat too much | Okay | Somewhat too little | Too little | No opinion |
| | 21 | | | |
| | 100% | | | |
| 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 |
| 3 | 17 | | 1 | |
| 14% | 81% | | 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. |
- Bringing up discussion of textbook content with real world examples. Organizing course content. Making class interesting.
- Dave is a very enthusiastic and friendly instructor. His idea of having weekly quizzes based on chapter reading was excellent and forced the students to read the material and learn it. His discussions were very broad and highlighted different perspectives on IS. The iClicker format chosen for the tests was very convenient.
- Discussions were good and very different from other courses.
- Engaging demeanor in class. Good choice of topics. Anecdotal examples were helpful in understanding material. Flexible and understanding.
- Enthusiastic and engaging style of teaching.
- Gave students a lot of say in how the course was run.
- Good at getting class involved.
- Including students in decision regarding the structure of the course. Explaining/discussing subjects in interesting ways keeping the student teacher relationship at a good level.
- Involving students in decision making. Great interactions with class.
- Lots of interesting discussions, kept the in-class portion of the course entertaining & enjoyable.
- Love that pizza.
- Nice to hear about other co-op experiences in the discussion.
- Set goals for students to learn, not just memorize. Create incentives to read the chapters. Fair marking approach.
- Teaching through discussion kept me interested in the work.
- The choices to students about evaluations. Interesting topics for discussion. Discussions about chapter were good. 'Open' project related to course.
- The open forum style of learning has been great for actually learning the content rather than just regurgitating it.
- Very engaging classes. Good discussions most of the time.
- Very engaging with the students. Creates an atmosphere where students like to attend.
- Well spoken, presented, etc.. Enthusiastic, entertaining, fun, etc.
| Please make constructive comments about anything in the instructor's technique or style that could, in your opinion, be improved. |
- At beginning of term, too much democracy at times. Took very long to decide things sometimes.
- Better power point slides. Provide more course material on slides.
- Big giving too much freedom on the day's 'lecture', sometimes the goal might be lost. However, I still enjoyed this methodology.
- Discussions could be a little more structured.
- Discussions sidetracked sometimes.
- Funny outfits. Force shy people to contribute more.
- I did well on all the quizzes, but it might have been cool to have a chapter X lecture the class before the Chapter X quiz.
- I think it would be great if the slides he presented in class would be available to review later.
- Lacking specificity for requirements in assignment (project). Slides were somewhat useless during class discussion.
- Maybe try sticking to the subjects a bit more.
- n/a -- everything was great.
- No more clicker quizzes, use written quizzes instead.
- Not good with these, sorry! It's been one of my most enjoyable courses at university, though.
- Post more slides of the book.
- There could be a bit more structure to the lectures instead of open discussion format.
| What were the strong points of the course? |
- A lot of flexibility on what we're learning.
- Bit outside the box, not purely CS. Good textbook, practically relevant.
- Flexible: improve learning.
- Gives a decent indication about the importance of IS & IT and how it should be managed.
- Good scope of information systems management.
- Great class room student participation and discussions.
- I love the anecdotes and real-world examples.
- Interesting topics. Relevant to real work in industry.
- Lots of choices.
- No coding. Discussion about chapter in real businesses.
- Small class, more engaging, good discussions, lots of fun at times.
- The large amount of discussion in class. Focus on parts of computer science that has nothing to do with programming.
- The quizzes, the textbook readings, the in-class discussions. The project pitch presentations were very interesting to watch.
- Topics very interesting for the most part. Even if they weren't, they seemed practical to know about.
- Weekly quizzes made us read the textbook.
| What were the weak points of the course? |
- Course content didn't go specific enough with more detailed examples.
- During lunch time, some boring topics.
- Overreliance on textbook for material.
- Some material was dry and the order of material in the chapters didn't really have a flow.
- Some of the terms seem a little wishy-washy.
- Some subjects were quite boring.
- Sometimes dry material, textbooks aren't always the best (not that this one is bad).
- Spelling errors in the book. Lame examples in book like Titanic for project man. Book references Ibid.
- The in-class quizzes are too difficult. More like a trivia contest than an actual academic evaluation.
- The lack of structure in the lectures. The lack of direction in the project.
- The midterm was very lengthy.
- The textbook fails at giving very good examples of the material/topic being taught. Especially the case studies.
- Too dependent on textbook: substitute less important topics for other content. More guest speakers throughout term would have been good.
- Too many quizzes. Have to memorize every little detail in chapter because the large amount of questions.
- Too much reading at times.
| 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. |
- Atmosphere was positive.
- Class was great, by far the class I most attended this term.
- Good atmosphere. Everyone seemed to feel open about sharing experiences.
- Good!
- Great atmosphere.
- Positive atmosphere: fair marking, fair midterms/quizzes.
- Positively.
- Positively.
- Positively.
- Positively. Positive & friendly attitude shown by professor & peers.
- There were one or two occurrences of profanity which I found offending but the class atmosphere was generally positive.
- Yes, no hatin'
| Any other comments, e.g., class size, suitability of room, noise level, etc. |
- :)
- All good in the hood.
- Approx. 20-25 students in the class. This works very well for learning in a classroom.
- Class size is good, fairly small.
- Definitely one of the most engaging and approachable professors in CS at UW.
- Enjoyed small class size.
- Fine.
- Small class sizes are awesome.
- This course well suited with less amount of students.
This was my first experiment with a truly "flipped" classroom. Each week they had to read a chapter, and then I had a quiz on the chapter material at the start of class on Tuesday (using clickers). I quickly realized that I needed to include some very specific details of the chapter in the quizzes to avoid students from being able to guess the answers. We would then have a list of discussion topics and have a very open and free-flowing discussion in class. For some of the chapters I strained to extend the material and discussion to the Thursday lecture, so by the end of the course I was introducing different material on Thursdays. Overall, I think the students were very happy with the experience, mostly because it was so different than all of their other courses.