TEACHING METHODOLOGY OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Ladislav Burita
Department of Industrial Engineering and Information Systems, Tomas Bata University, Mostni 5139, Zlin, Czech Republic
Communication and Information Systems Department, University of Defence, Kounicova 65, Brno, Czech Republic
Keywords: Information System, Teaching, Structured Methodology, MS Access.
Abstract: The article describes the content and methodology of teaching the foundations of information systems
development. It presents the content and structure of the course, motivational aspects applied, and an
illustrative example of a credit assignment – the result of student’s work. As a theoretical approach, the
structured methodology for information systems development is applied. The physical model is created in
the Microsoft Access database management system.
1 INTRODUCTION
The development of information systems (IS) for
commercial use is being executed through agile
methodologies and object approaches.
Predominantly, web applications are being
created, and working with IS by using mobile
devices is being solved.
Yet we should not condemn some historical
methodology approaches, such as structured
methodology; we should use them appropriately
with respect to the new conditions, bearing in mind
what is important and how they can be useful in
teaching.
Although the structured methodology is rather
historical, its application is still required, e.g.
(Giannoccaro, 2007).
The article presents the experience gained in
teaching the course named ‘Development and
administration of IS’, which is based on a structured
approach. It is specified in studies for bachelor’s
degree as follows:
1. The introductory course in the ‘Information
Systems’ programme for future specialists in
information technology (IT).
2. The course providing basic information about
IS for future specialists in business
(economics, management, etc.).
The article describes the structure and content of
the course, pays attention to its motivating factors,
shows an example of student’s work and evaluates
the benefits of the course.
2 STRUCTURE AND CONTENT
OF THE COURSE
The course begins with the analysis of IS issues. It
includes the following topics: the concept of IS, its
meaning and classification, data - information –
knowledge, database system (DBS), data structures
of database systems, the function of database
management system (DBMS) and database (DB)
properties.
Then follows the teaching of the IS modelling. It
includes the topics of the IS model, general
principles of modelling, IS life cycle, methodology -
method - technique - tool.
After that a structured approach to IS
development and a conceptual level of modelling are
introduced. This part can be described as the core for
understanding the field and the proper basis for
analytical thinking of an IS creator. The structured
methodology (levels and dimensions of modelling,
application of general approaches to modelling, a
conceptual level model) are explained. The
constructs and rules of the entity-relationship
diagram (ERD), functional diagram (FD) and data
dictionary (DD) are presented.
The course also includes the creation of IS by
students themselves. The necessary information is
conveyed through an example, starting with the
specifications and finding requirements for the IS,
proceeding to various levels of modelling, creating
the custom application and documenting the process
and outcome. The theme for the creation of an IS is
chosen by the students themselves. The procedure
179
Burita L..
TEACHING METHODOLOGY OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS.
DOI: 10.5220/0003954101790182
In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2012), pages 179-182
ISBN: 978-989-8565-07-5
Copyright
c
2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
for the IS development and the outcome are given by
detailed guidelines.
In the last part of the course, the logical and
physical levels of IS modelling are introduced. They
include the relational data model (RDM), the
transformation of the ERD to RDM, RDM
normalization, and relational operations. The
development environment of the database
management system (DBMS), MS Access and the
description of the basic elements of the application
(table, query, form and report) are presented.
The above mentioned structure of the course is
suitable for teaching the IT specialists. In the case of
the ‘business’ oriented students, some of the
passages can be omitted or modified, and thus the
learning objectives can be adapted to the students’
needs. It is not necessary to present the details of
DBS, it is possible to replace the definition of the
RDM by the ‘table view of data’, to omit
normalization and relational operations. In addition,
this group of students could become more familiar
with the work in MS Access.
The course requirements include a course credit
and an examination. The credit is earned for
developing and documenting an IS. Students use a
textbook (Burita, 2005).
3 MOTIVATIONAL ASPECTS OF
THE COURSE
The basic motivational tool is continuous repetition
of the teaching content and checking the students’
skills and knowledge by testing them. Their test
results are part of their final evaluation. In addition,
the process of the IS creation is checked
individually, the ERD design and its transformation
into the RDM are discusses.
A well-proven motivational tool is the choice of
the IS theme according to student’s interest. It is
easier to design and create an IS when the student is
familiar with its environment and has a positive
relationship with it. After several years of assigning
this task, it can be summarized that the most popular
topics for IS creations are:
• ICT (computers, graphic cards, mobile phones,
software, data media, satellite communica-
tion, errors of security codes, overview on
signals).
• Trade and services (car sales, motorcycle sales,
car repair service, mobile phones, music,
food).
• Music (music bands and singers, recorded
music, DVD, musical instruments).
• Sports competition (soccer, fire sports,
athletics, shooting, body building).
• Teaching (student records, future practice for
students, eLearning exercises).
• Machinery (automobiles, motorcycles,
weapons).
But the students also choose less frequent topics
such as:
• Geography (cities, geocaching).
• Games (spacecraft).
• Lifestyle (nutrition, beer).
• Records of attendance at work.
• Books and libraries.
The structure of instruction and the way the tasks
are assigned and evaluated lead the students to
independence. This is especially evident when they
work on their course credit task. Brief orientation
and basic demands for their credit task are given to
students in the form of written instructions. After the
approval of the theme for their IS development and
specification of the IS requirements, they proceed, if
possible, on their own. The important progressive
phases of work (conceptual and logical model) are
discussed with the teacher, and the students continue
only after submitting the outcomes and obtaining the
teacher’s approval. The actual development tool for
the implementation of IS is not presented in detail at
lectures. It is up to the students to master work with
MS Access; they themselves have to acquire the
necessary aids. Or they may even choose other
software development framework (Delphi, PHP,
etc.). The submission of the course credit assignment
is interactive; the students respond to the teacher’s
comments via electronic means of communication.
4 EXAMPLE
The example presents an outcome of student’s work
in the academic year 2011-12. Its theme is
‘Geocaching’ (Bielik, 2011). Based on the
documentation of this assignment, the following
parts will be presented:
• Assignment for the IS development.
• Entity-relationship diagram (ERD), Figure 1.
• Data dictionary (DD), Figure 2.
• Functional diagram (FD), Figure 3.
• Relational data model (RDM), Figure 4.
• Description of the final application.
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Assignment Specification. Create an information
system about cashes and their owners. The cache
entity is characterized by the following attributes:
• the name of the cache
• hint
• the date of creation
• the date of the last visit
• coordinates
The cache entity is further specified by the
entities of type and size of the cache and the
difficulty of the terrain where the cache is located.
The person entity (the owner of the cache) is
characterized by the following attributes:
• owners’ name
• the date of creation the account
• the number of caches found
The IS should allow for saving, deleting, editing
and searching the data from the stored data and the
creation of required reports.
Figure 1: Entity-relationship diagram [Source: author].
Figure 2: Data dictionary [Source: author].
The IS about caches and their owners was
created in MS Access DBMS. The IS provides users
with convenient and clear browsing through data
about cashes and their owners. To manage the
database, functions for adding, deleting, and editing
data are available. The program also allows the
creation of reports according to selected criteria.
Figure 3: Functional diagram [Source: author].
Figure 4: Database structure on the RDM [Source: author].
Figure 5: User interface of the application [Source:
author].
The main menu (see Figure 5) offers seven
function buttons. Clicking the ‘Caches’ button
enable the users to view the data about cashes; they
can be added, edited or deleted. Clicking the
‘Owners’ button provides the users with similar
functions concerning their owners (see Figure 6).
By clicking the ‘Type Listing’, the users get a
report in which caches are sorted by types (see
Figure 7). The ‘Size Listing’ button offers the same
function; the set contains all caches sorted by size.
By clicking the ‘Search by Type’ button, the users
get a form in which they can choose the type of
cache that they want to be displayed.
The ‘Search by Size’ button has a similar
function as the type of cache, but it is arranged by
size. The last function of the menu is a list, where
the user can select the level of terrain difficulty.
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Clicking the ‘Query’ button shows the table of
caches selected according to the degree of terrain
difficulty.
Figure 6: Information about the owners [Source: author].
Figure 7: Report on the types of cashes.
5 IMPORTANCE AND BENEFITS
The importance of the course for ‘business’ oriented
students lies in obtaining comprehensive theoretical
information and practical experience in information
systems and their development. Certainly, the
subject contributes to the students’ ability to
document the results of their work and to work
independently on an assignment.
The future IT specialists should benefit from the
course by acquiring strong knowledge of basic
concepts of information systems, which can be
further developed in their further study and practice.
The students do not need further expansion of the
knowledge concerning the relational data model in
the future, which, despite all the advances in IT, is
nearly 100% presented in current DBMS.
An important benefit of the course is the
development of students’ ability to work
independently and to document the results of their
work.
In both groups of students, the evaluation of the
documentation of their IS is aimed at encouraging
students to work professionally with a text editor. It
is truly surprising that most of our secondary schools
graduates are not ready to create quality documents
and are very poorly trained in the use of the office
automation software.
6 CONCLUSIONS
The article summarizes the experience in teaching
the foundations of IS. By stepwise refinement of the
content and process of teaching, the course has
reached the stage which guarantees its stability with
the useful pieces of knowledge gained from
methodological procedures applied, including the
activation of students and their independent work
development.
The article shows an illustrative example of
student’s work, which is presented without any
corrections. The students' feedback on the course is
positive; they appreciate the opportunity to become
familiar with one of the approaches to IS
development, and are grateful for the strong
knowledge concerning the theory of IS modelling.
The preparation of undergraduate students
includes the described course as an introduction to
the study. So far, the students have received
education in general subjects only and their
expectations are set high. We can state that their
ideas were met. They have obtained substantial
foundations for further education in IS and gained
deep interest in the study program.
REFERENCES
Burita, L. et al., 2005. Information systems. Textbook U-
3099. Brno: University of Defence Print, 176 p.
Bielik, M., 2011. IS on Geocaching, Course credit
assignment: IS Development and Administration
Course. Brno: University of Defence, 7 p.
Giannocarro R. et al., 2007, A Structured Methodology for
Developing Performance Measures in any
Environment. [On Line], available at http://
maja.uni-mb.si/files/apem/APEM2-2_91-99.pdf
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