IS for Managers Online (ISMO)

Overview

Management Information Systems (MIS) course (37C00100) is a BIZ Bachelor’s level course that gives the students the essential business technology skills they need in the digitalized and technology-driven working life of today. Examples include skills related to creating chatbots and and deploying state-of-the art business analytics tools. To date, the MIS course has been available once a year, as a traditionally lectured course only, and the course assignments and the exam have been graded one-by-one in Mycourses by the responsible teacher and her teaching assistants. The 2019 course website can be seen from this link: https://mycourses.aalto.fi/course/view.php?id=20058. Given the technology-intensive nature of the assignments and the exam, grading them has demanded a lot of resources. What’s more, because of the limitation of the course being offered only once a year, many students say that they have had to take the MIS course later in their studies than ideal. The students have been pleased that the assignments are offered online and they can be completed online and also in advance of the submission schedule, if wanted. However, they have been asking for a fully online version of the course that they could complete more flexibly according to their own schedule. With the demand for the analytics and other business technology skills only increasing in the future, the number of the students wanting to attend the MIS course will without doubt increase, too. However, given the limitations of the traditional course discussed above, it is unlikely that all these students can fit the course in their schedule. Another issue is the increasing workload of grading the assignments and the exam manually.

To solve the abovementioned issues in the course timing and grading and open up the MIS course for an increasingly wider student base, we are aiming to digitalize the MIS course and turning it into a self-study online course that can be completed by the students as it fits their schedule. This will include digitalizing all the learning materials and providing online videos and peer support forums for the students. Further, by utlizing automatized grading systems for the assignments and the exam to the extent possible, we will be able to open up the course for more students with fewer resources.