Data, Information, and Organizations

All organizations collect process and store data to accomplish their missions and fulfill their visions.  Transactional data is a key resource that is used by the core applications that facilitate the organization’s operations.  This data is in turn replicated, organized, aggregated, joined, labelled, and becomes reports, dashboards, and presentations used to manage the various processes of the organization at all levels.  This 9-unit course is intended as a guide for teaching a class on the relationships between data, information, and the operations of the organization.

We will cover:

• Mission and Vision, systems thinking and analysis.
• Organization Structure, how to decompose and diagram business activities and processes.
• Databases and Operational Data Stores.
• How Data is stored physically and why we are in the middle of a data revolution and how Virtualization has changed the landscape.
• Database Concepts- Star and Snowflake Schema.
• Basics of the cloud and its impact on where information may be stored.
• Social Media Information Systems.
• Information Security and the Software Development Life Cycle.
• Business Intelligence and Data Visualization.

I teach the course using the Pressbook as a lecture guide and assign readings and activities from Open Education Resource textbooks, cases, articles, TED talks, etc. as assignments throughout the semester.  I usually assign a medium sized mid term case and a large final case and along with various individual and team exercises.  Where I can I will list the Open Educational Resources I use along with each unit.