Week 2 Discussion Comments

You made some very good points this week. I also appreciate the examples you included from work environments. My comments on each discussion follow.

W2D2a Old and New IT

Answer the following questions for the organization in which you work or for Dominican University (pick only one organization).

1. Name one "old IT" system in the organization you picked. Explain what is does.

2. Name on "new IT" system in the organization you picked. Explain what it does.  Is the organization making a big investment in this system? Also, does this system change the business model of the organization. (An easy way to think of "business model" is "what does the organization do to make money?  What does is sell?")

3. Can you think of any current or future "new IT" system that might put your organization out of business or severely reduce profits?  This has already happened to book stores, newspapers, CD/DVD manufacturing companies, and to some extent taxi companies.

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The purpose of this Discussion was to get you to think more about the future of Management Information Systems. Most of you gave examples of how "old systems" did not provide much automation and were sometimes difficult to use. In your examples "new systems" were easier to use, provided more automation and were present in more areas of the business. The third question was designed to let you think about the future of your industry, your business, and your career. Questions you could ask at least once a year include:

1. Could my job be outsourced? Can the judgements I make be coded into a rules based system so that most of my job could be done by a lower-skilled and less expensive person? What should I be learning over the next year to position me for where I want to go or to where I think my company is going?

2. Is my company's current business model viable in 5 years? Is it viable in 10 years? What new businesses should my company be starting on now? Should current business processes be changed to take advantage of new technology and new systems?

3. What existing technology that is not being used in my company be adopted by my company? What training do I and my fellow employees need to take advantage of existing technology.

Your questions do not need to be of strategic planning quality or presentable to other people. They just need to get you thinking. 

Example: my job at Dominican

1. Why can't all the homework assignments be graded automatically. I have seen software used at Berkeley that can be configured to grade Python programming assignments and give students feedback without processor involvement. Note: I have no idea of how to grade research papers automatically.

2. What stops me from teaching 100 students with the same level of effort that is currently required to teach 20? Do I see any software on the market or soon-to-be on the market to help me teach five times more students with the same level of effort? What will that do to the job market? Should I learn about machine learning in more depth?

3. Will students want to be educated at multiple institutions since "eveyone" will have online courses so the physical location of the University should not matter. Will students prefer to get certificates from a short series of courses instead of degrees? Will there be a central database for all grades and transcripts that displaces grade recording and historical records at each University?