Entries tagged as 'msis'
7150
Posted Monday, 6 August 2007
I’m doing a guest lecture tonight in Larry Rowland’s IS 6000 course. My topic is action research, and I’ll discuss several methods that MSIS students can use to complete the professional paper sequence.
Here is a PowerPoint file with annotated slides that I will use during the talk.
Here are a couple of pages from this site during tonight’s talk:
I have a page full of information about writing papers in APA style. It’s listed as “APA style” on the main menu of this site. My example of an annotated bibliography is here, and is also listed under the section about Lesley University.
This page has two relevant sections. One is a discussion of how to write research papers. The other examines the concept of authority in peer-reviewed articles. This page is listed as “References” on the main menu of this site.
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Posted Monday, 4 June 2007
Yesterday’s Star-Bulletin included an article about the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) help desk facility at Ford Island. The official name is Pacific Theatre Battle Watch.
The facility was built inside a battle-damaged hangar, and is staffed by 12 EDS contract employees.
For those who haven’t heard of NMCI, it’s a good overview of the system’s stated goals. It’s a huge project, covering 500,000 computers and 400,000 users around the world. I’ve met several MSIS students who are associated with this project over the years. More details are available in these 2002 and 2007 GCN articles.
(Photo courtesy of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin)
I was surprised to learn that the command center cost only US$1M, but the reconstruction project for the hangar cost US$65M.
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Posted Wednesday, 7 March 2007
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What is a good reference for my assignment?
It depends upon several factors, such as the reputation, scope, audience and other factors.
In the end, each student must consider how appropriate the reference is to the assignment requirements. This requires students to do careful reading, critical thinking, and to exercise some common sense.
Hawaii Pacific University has a helpful statement on academic honesty. This 
is the academic honesty handout that is part of the course syllabus.
Write to Done has a great article about how to find sources and references.
Wabash College has a very good list of resources about “good references”.
Writing Research Essays in North American Academic Institutions offers many helpful tips for US and international students on writing exploratory research essays. There are also good instructions on citations, references and how to avoid plagiarism. The author uses the Turabian format, but many of these instructions can be adapted for APA. (snurl.com/1ts1)
Cornell University
Widener University - evaluating Web references
Internet Detective - interactive tutorial on evaluating Web resources
What is a “scholarly” or “peer reviewed” journal?
If you are writing a paper for IS 6000, or you are writing an MSIS thesis or thesis proposal, it is required that you read, cite and include relevant research articles published in “scholarly” or “peer reviewed” journals.
As an MSIS student, it is essential that you find and read relevant journals and articles throughout the entire master’s program. This is a great way to identify research topics.
MSIS students should also develop their own annotated bibliographies of important articles. For some articles, you should write one-page summaries for later reference.
As an aspiring IS professional, you will find many scholarly and peer reviewed journals that can improve your technical and managerial skills.
In most cases, these journals are not newspapers, magazines, or web sites that are published for a general audience. These journals are highly specialized publications that present relevant research articles to a specific audience.
The terms “scholarly” or “peer reviewed”, when applied to paper or electronic publications, generally mean that:
- The primary audience of these journals is specialized, and may include professors, graduate students and researchers.
- Faculty members who apply for tenure are often evaluated on the articles they have published in these journals.
- Each journal has a set of rules that describe specific field(s) of study or topic area(s). Some journals are very general, while others are very specific.
- The title of the journal may or may not include words like annals, journal, or review. The title itself is not a guarantee that the journal is peer-reviewed, of course.
- There are journals that are devoted to theory building, often using exploratory and descriptive research methods. Many journals are devoted to empirical research studies that test or extend existing theory.
- All submissions are reviewed by at least one expert in the journal’s field(s) of study.
- The editor and/or reviewers can accept or reject a submitted article. Readers can assume that any articles that are accepted meet the journal’s standards for publication, and represent a contribution to the journal’s field(s) of study.
- In some cases, the author(s) are asked to revise and resubmit their submission. A list of suggested revisions and comments is usually included in this request. Completing all of the revisions does not guarantee that the article will be accepted. However, an “R&R” letter usually signals the editor’s interest in publishing the edited article.
- These journals often have special or theme issues that concentrate on a very specific topic. Sometimes a call for papers is published, asking authors to submit suitable articles. In some cases, the authors for this issue have been asked by the editor(s) to contribute or write an article.
- Some scholarly and peer reviewed journals are more competitive than others. Well-known and respected journals often reject most unsolicited submissions for publication. Other journals have a token review process, and may print many of their submissions.
- Most scholarly and peer reviewed journals are found in libraries and bibliographic databases. Some readers and libraries buy annual subscriptions so that they receive a paper copy of the journal for their own use. Only a few highly popular journals are sold at bookstores and newsstands.
U Nevada-Reno (snurl.com/1trn)
Scholarly and peer-reviewed IS journals and periodicals
This is not a complete list, by any means.
- www.acm.org - check the Association for Computing Machinery’s Digital Library for peer-reviewed articles in ACM journals.
- Social Science Research Network (SSRN) Information Systems and eBusiness Journals
- Management Information Systems Quarterly (MISQ)
- Journal of Management Information Systems (JMIS)
- Information Systems Research (ISR)
- Informs
- Decision Sciences
- Sloan Management Review
- DataBase
- Information and Management
- Journal of Organizational Computing
- Electronic Commerce
- Journal of Data Warehousing
- Communications Research
- International Journal of Information Systems
- Journal of Global Information Technology Management
- Journal of Global Information Management
- Information Systems Management
- Decision Support Systems
- Communications of the CAIS
- Communications of the AIS
- Journal of End User Computing
- Small Group Research
- Organizational Computing
- International Journal of Electronic Commerce
- Information Systems Management Journal
- Business Horizons
- European Journal of Information Systems
- Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce
- California Management Review
IS web sites
These are mostly news and reporting sites that are not scholarly or peer reviewed journals. They are usually reliable sources of helpful news and information.
Beware of press releases, sponsored links, white papers and advertisements in these sources. Because all of these sites and publications rely on advertising revenue, readers will find many advertisements that are disguised as content.
IS research topics
For students in IS 6000 and 7100, the following web sites and keywords are good starting places for identifying appropriate thesis research topics.
- CIO.com Research Centers (with a tip of the hat to Larry Rowland for the link and his advice that if your topic isn’t covered in this site, the topic may not be worth researching in the first place.)
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Posted Friday, 26 January 2007
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Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others. - Pierre Abelard
Hawaii Pacific University has selected the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th edition) as the style and formatting standard in its graduate-level programs and courses, including the MSIS and MBA.
Remember that the 5th edition of the APA Publication Manual is the best source for information. Students should buy their own copy of the manual and use it during their academic program. I recommend the spiral-bound version, which is available at Amazon.com. This version lays flat, unlike the university bookstore’s paperback version. Of course, one could buy the paperback edition and have it rebound at a copying or office supply store.
- APA updated guidelines on citing and listing electronic references. Some of these guidelines have changed since the 5th edition was published, so check this page. This includes a June 2007 publication that addresses email, Web pages, blogs, comments, YouTube.
- Errata for the 5th edition of the APA Publication Manual. There were some typographical and content errors in the initial printings of the manual. This is a good document to print and place inside your manual.
I check written assignments in my courses for APA compliance. APA formatting helps students write assignments that are easy for me to read and understand.
Usage of the APA manual also offers good lessons in the fine art of RTFM (reading the fine manual). As a manager or employee, you may be expected to write documents that conform to your organization’s style manual.
If you’re really lucky, you may have to select or write your organization’s style manual. This may be more karma than you need.
Evidence of careful APA formatting also indicates to me that the student has paid attention to the assignment requirements, and didn’t try to write their assignment at the last minute.
Therefore, I sometimes return poorly written or formatted assignments without a grade.
Here are some links on APA formatting. Students may use these sites as needed to supplement the course materials.
My own APA formatting guides
- (PDF) I use this table when I’m grading papers. It has examples and page references that help me find sections in the APA manual.
- (PPT) This is a slide show that I’ve shown in class when I discuss the APA formatting requirements
- (PDF) Here are some example citations for an academic journal article. This document focuses on how to cite articles found in EBSCO, including the “persistent link”
Web services for APA formatting
The HPU Library tab in Campus Pipeline has a link for the APA Citation Maker.
BibMe lets users search for articles, books and other resources, and then it formats the entry. It seems to do a good job with books – just enter the ISBN number, and BibMe creates a citation that can be copied into a document.
Here’s an example for a book I helped write a few years ago – the ISBN number is 0782140815 and BibMe’s result is as follows:
Dulaney, E., Lane, P., & Sodeman, W. (2002). CIW: Foundations Study Guide. New York: Sybex.
Pretty close to the mark, I’d say. Remember that you must select “APA” from the drop-down list, and then press “Download”, save the .RTF file and then open the file to see the formatting.
The IS 6100 textbook for 2007 has the ISBN 9780073511542 – and here’s BibMe’s result below.
O’Brien, J. (2006). Management Information Systems. Guilford: Mcgraw-Hill College.
What’s wrong with this result? Plenty.
- The primary author’s name, as listed on the book itself, is James A. O’Brien.
- The co-author’s name is missing. George M. Marakas deserves some credit, after all.
- The publisher’s name is not correct. It’s McGraw-Hill Irwin.
- The publisher’s city is not correct: it should be Boston, not Guilford. Perhaps BibMe is retrieving the UK version of the text?
- The publication date is 2008, not 2006.
So we need to edit BibMe’s suggestion as follows:
O’Brien, J. A. & Marakas, G. M. (2008). Management Information Systems. Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Even then, it’s still not formatted correctly! Keep in mind that the above examples are missing their hanging indents.
Microsoft Word templates for APA formatting
There are several Word templates available that claim to do APA formatting. You can find several on Google. Most of the “free” templates aren’t very good. Some of them may contain viruses and trojans.
One benefit is that these templates have built-in styles to handle headings. Some templates can also format title pages and citations.
Some of my students like Perrla. I haven’t tried it, but it appears to have a good feature set.I use a Word template from Reference Point Software. The template is very accurate, and it’s inexpensive. No, I won’t send you a copy. I used to write software, and sometimes a copyright is a good thing to have.
I have seen students try to “borrow” this product by copying a DOC file from another student. (I like to check the File, Properties dialog to determine who created the file.) All the students will get are the styles. Hey, you get what you pay for in this world.
The full version of the Reference Point software is a template that adds APA menu choices to Word and WordPerfect. These menu choices can make the template much easier to use.
The RPS online help section (Java required) includes instructions for building a Table of Contents, which is not discussed in the APA manual, but is required for the final MSIS thesis and graduate applied project papers.
Even the developers of these templates acknowledge there is no substitute for the APA Publication Manual. After all, these companies wouldn’t have a product if the manual wasn’t so widely used.
Also, it is always possible for a user to override or change the Word template settings, which may make the document noncompliant with APA standards.
The APA sells its own document formatting software, APA Style Helper. I have a report that the latest version works better than previous filter-based builds, but I haven’t tried this software myself.
If you’ve made it this far down the page, and you read everything else, congratulations to you. This document is a bit dry and crunchy, but it’s helpful for my graduate students.If you found this page on Google, you’re probably looking for quotes from one of my favorite comic strips ever,
Calvin and Hobbes.
- The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!
- Verbing weirds language.
- That’s the whole problem with science. You’ve got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder.
- Calvin: I’m a genius, but I’m a misunderstood genius.
Hobbes: What’s misunderstood about you?
Calvin: Nobody thinks I’m a genius.
- If you do the job badly enough, sometimes you don’t get asked to do it again.
- The only skills I have the patience to learn are those that have no real application in life.
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Posted Tuesday, 23 January 2007
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William A. Sodeman is an associate professor of information systems in the College of Professional Studies at Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu. He was promoted to the rank of associate professor in 2005.
He teaches graduate-level courses in the MSIS, MBA and Executive MBA programs, with a primary focus on the strategic management of technology, innovation and information systems.
He teaches several online courses each year. He currently uses this blog and TurnItIn.com to manage his courses, and he has also used WebCT and Moodle to manage sections.
His current research interests include social networking, stadium naming rights agreements, and socially responsible investing. His recent publications include 6 articles in the Encyclopedia of Business Ethics (Sage, 2007) and the CIW Foundations Study Guide (Sybex, 2002).
He has directed several MSIS student research projects, and has taught several research methods courses.
Dr. Sodeman has also taught Java programming courses, although he does more work with PHP these days.
Dr. Sodeman was the chair of the HPU Faculty Assembly for the 2007-08 academic year.
From 2003 to 2006, he was the program chair for Information Systems at HPU. He also directed the first two cohorts of the MSIS Professional program.
He was the secretary of the Honolulu chapter of the AITP from 2004 to 2006, and is a director of the chapter.
He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on management, business policy, business & society and international business at Marquette University (visiting assistant professor, 1993-1994) and the University of Southern Indiana (assistant professor, 1994-1997).
Education
In 1993, Dr. Sodeman received his Ph.D. in business administration from the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia. His major field of study was strategic management, with a minor in management information systems. Dr. Sodeman also took courses on entrepreneurship, technology & innovation, business & society, and research methods. He was inducted into Sigma Iota Epsilon in 1990, and Blue Key in 1992.
While he was a doctoral teaching assistant, he taught over 20 undergraduate sections of business policy and principles of management. The university was on the quarter system, and doctoral students were regularly given solo teaching assignments for sections of 30 to 50 undergraduate business students.
His dissertation, Social investing: The role of corporate social performance in investment decisions, examined the decision making processes that socially responsible investment (SRI) managers use. His dissertation chair was Dr. Archie B. Carroll. The dissertation was nominated twice for the annual best dissertation award of Social Issues in Management division of the Academy of Management. Copies of the dissertation are available for purchase from UMI.
He earned his MBA and was inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma in 1988 at the Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. Crummer was and remains one of the few AACSB-accredited graduate business programs in the USA that focuses exclusively on its MBA program. The Crummer School does not offer an undergraduate business degree or a doctorate.
While he was at Crummer, Dr. Sodeman served as the secretary of the MBA Student Association and hosted a weekly alternative music radio show at WPRK-FM. He also completed a student internship with the Orlando Utilities Commission, during which he wrote a software simulation for the commission’s electric generation network.
In 1986, Dr. Sodeman earned a BA degree in fine arts at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. He worked in several media, including painting, intaglio, and photography. He hosted alternative and classical radio programs at WCWM-FM, where he also served as chief announcer and training director. During this time, he also assisted in planning the station’s move from Phi Beta Kappa Hall to its current location in the Student Center. He also worked as an intern at the Muscarelle Museum of Art. He was inducted into the Society of Collegiate Journalists in 1985.
Interests
Dr. Sodeman has completed 5 marathons and a 50km ultramarathon.
He lettered in track ih high school, where he ran 1 and 2 mile events.
My last name
My last name is very easy to pronounce and spell.
Here’s a handy pronunciation guide from PronounceNames.com
My university email address includes my entire last name.
There is NO “R”.
There’s only ONE “N”.
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