Learning
Outcome Assessment
Each program has an assessment coordinator. Dr. Chen is presently the assessment coordinator for the undergraduate program in ISDS; Dr. Watson is the assessment coordinator for the MS program and Dr. Hirschheim is the assessment coordinator for the PhD program. Dr. Watson and Dr. Hirschheim serve also as advisors to the respective programs. Once every year the faculty members of the ISDS Department meet for a three-day retreat and discuss learning outcomes assessment and strategic planning. The retreat is usually held during the fall semester. But because of hurricane Katrina, this year’s retreat has been postponed to the spring semester. During this retreat, the results of the assessment will be discussed and evaluated.
The current learning goals have been developed over the past two years to conform to a large extend with the E J Ourso College of Businesses’ learning goals. This reflects the fact that 75% of the undergraduate courses in the ISDS are either general education courses (50%) or business core courses (25%) taken by all majors in the college and only 25% are ISDS specific courses.
Each learning objective is assessed on a three-year cycle. Some learning objectives are assessed each year as indicated in the matrix.
Two of the eight learning objectives were assessed during the fall 2005 semester.
| Objectives | Assessment Process | Schedule of Assessment Implementation | Use of Results to Improve Program |
|---|---|---|---|
| Information Systems Body of Knowledge: When confronted with a business case, students will be able to use knowledge of information systems to support a successful analysis, design and implementation of an IT project. | The objective is assessed directly in the first major course ISDS 3100: Management of Information Resources and the senior-level capstone course ISDS 4125: Analysis and Design of Management Information Systems. A standardized Pre-Test will be given in ISDS 3100 and a standardized Post-Test will be given in ISDS 4125. | The tests will be given each semester and the objective is assessed each year. | A test instrument was developed (http://130.39.244.152/ss2/wsb.dll/isschn/ISDS_BOK.htm) to assess the body of knowledge. Test questions were taken from published certification tests in information systems to covers a broad body knowledge expected from an ISDS major. The questions were reviewed by all instructors for appropriateness. The test was given to entering students in ISDS 3100 and to graduating studnets in ISDS 4125. This direct learning outcome measure indicated that there was a considerable increase in the body of knowledge area of Information Systems when students in ISDS 3100 are compared with students in the capstone course ISDS 4125 students. The results are posted at: http://isds.bus.lsu.edu/facultyinfo/Assessment/BOD_knowledge.htm The overall rate of correct answers increased from 35% in ISDS 3100 to 60% in ISDS 4125. Given that no extra credit was given to the students for answering the questions the result is satisfactory. However, some questions did not lead to the desired increase. The results will be carefully analyzed during the spring 2006 retreat to determine if this was due to a lack of knowledge or a weakness in the specific instrument used or in the way it was deployed. Overall the results of the tests were satisfactory. However, there may be some weaknesses revealed by the assessment. These weaknesses will be reviewed during the spring retreat and actions will be proposed to improve the ISDS program. |
| Analysis and design abilities: When confronted with a business case, students will be able analyze the facts, obtain user requirements, design a system meeting these requirements and implement the system using the appropriate technology. | Samples from the required courses (3105, 3100, 3200, and 4125) will be taken every three years from the past three years. The projects will be evaluated by the undergraduate committee. Specifically, the assessment focuses on (1) meeting user requirements, (2) evaluating the design, (3) functionality, (4) user manual, and (5) errors encountered. | This objective is assessed every three years through a sample of projects from 3105, 3100, 3200, and 4125. | A sample of projects was taken from the required ISDS courses: 3105, 3110, 3200 and 4125. The projects were analyzed by the undergraduate committee. The last assessment was done in fall of 2005. The assessment has lead to changes in the course contents an emphasis: (1) the dot net technology is now used throughout 3105,3110, 3200 and 4125 courses; (2) more emphasis will be placed on writing a "User Manual". |
Appendix
Fall 2005 Body of Knowledge Test Result
| Number | Question | Before | After | Diff |
| 1 | Fred and his team built an information system for a client. They know the information system is incomplete and unstable, yet they were willing to show this working model to the client in order to elicit feedback. What type of information system is this? | 69% | 87% | 17% |
| 2 | What’s the blueprint of a database? | 19% | 100% | 81% |
| 3 | Which one of the following techniques is to used to generate managerial reports? | 18% | 47% | 29% |
| 4 | Which one of the following techniques is used to find the hidden relationships between data entities? | 77% | 93% | 16% |
| 5 | The referential integrity rule requires that _________. | 46% | 73% | 28% |
| 6 | When you create a new entity to represent a multi-valued attribute in a DBMS, what is the relationship between the original entity and the new one? | 41% | 67% | 26% |
| 7 | Assume that an Employee table has three attributes (columns) -Employee_ID (primary key), Employee_Name and Employee_Department_ID. Which of the following SQL aggregate functions would be used with GROUP BY EMPLOYEE_DEPARTMENT_ID in a command to calculate the total number of employees in each department? | 19% | 36% | 17% |
| 8 | Vanessa is working on a systems development project when she comes to you and says, "Hey, my boss just told me I needed to do some conceptual modeling, but he didn't tell me why. Do you know what modeling is good for?" Which of the following answers is correct? | 57% | 93% | 36% |
| 9 | Why is it a good thing to prioritize the goals of a system's user interface? | 51% | 71% | 21% |
| 10 | What is the value of intPositive when the following statements are executed? (read ";" as line break) &LF;Const intNumber As Integer = 10;&LF;Select Case intNumber;&LF; Case 1, 3, 5, 7, 9;&LF; intPositive = intNumber;&LF; Case 2, 4, 6, 8, 10;&LF; intPositive = intNumber + 1 * 2;&LF; Case Is > 10;&LF; intPositive = intNumber * 2 + 1;&LF; Case Else;&LF; intPositive = 0;&LF; End Select; | 37% | 50% | 13% |
| 11 | Your web browser is an example of ___ software; the web site you visit with your browser is running on a type of ____ software. | 38% | 93% | 55% |
| 12 | A typical transaction processing system has to be able to do which of the following? | 79% | 80% | 1% |
| 13 | What term is defined as: “An interrelated set of components working together toward a common goal by accepting input and processing it into output?” | 59% | 100% | 41% |
| 14 | Jay Adams has a new telephone number and you need to update his information. When you run the file to update Jay Adams’s telephone number, this error message appears: Directory Object not found. The file is displayed in the following format: Dn: ou=Jay Adams,ou=sales,dc=cohowinery,dc=com; changetype: modify; replace: telephoneNumber; telephoneNumber: 602-555-4321&LF;You must find the error with this file and correct it. Which part of the file is causing the error? | 29% | 40% | 11% |
| 15 | In an internet, different individual networks are connected by __________. | 63% | 67% | 4% |
| 16 | In Windows Server 2003, the main repository for information about network users and resources is called: | 33% | 80% | 47% |
| 17 | Sensitive messages to and from the customer in e-commerce dialogues usually are protected by __________. | 33% | 73% | 40% |
| 18 | This statement is like a chain of If statements. They perform their test, one after the other, until one of them is found to be true. | 37% | 87% | 49% |
| 19 | The ________ loop is ideal for situations that require a counter because it is specifically designed to initialize, test, and increment a counter variable. | 27% | 33% | 6% |
| 20 | What is an argument? | 37% | 87% | 49% |
| 21 | The syntax of a code statement that changes the properties of a control at run time is in the form of ________. | 29% | 80% | 51% |
| 22 | The actions an object can perform are called ______, while those recognized by an object are ______. | 11% | 27% | 16% |
| 23 | An individual item can be deleted from a list box with the_____. | 24% | 93% | 69% |
| 24 | You are managing databases for a long distance phone company. One of these databases is used to temporarily hold millions of phone call records. After the billing processes are finished, you have to delete certain records from the tables, and you need to use your system disk resources conservatively. How would you create the database and what kind of settings would you use? | 24% | 57% | 33% |
| 25 | You are designing a logical model to collect information about the composition of fragrances for perfumeries. This model will be used to create a database containing the recipes for different fragrances, and the percentages of each ingredient in the fragrance recipe will need to be tracked. You design an entity called PerfumeComposition and an entity called Ingredient. The percentage of each ingredient in a particular perfume will be stored in the PerfumeComposition table, one row for each ingredient. You want to ensure that the sum of the ingredient percentages for a perfume does not exceed 100. How can you accomplish this? | 43% | 36% | -8% |
| 26 | You are creating a model of employees in a large international company. Each country provides a government-generated number given to every person authorized to work. Other information contained in the employee entity would be family name, given name, phone number, and address. Which of the following is the best choice to uniquely identify each employee? | 30% | 53% | 24% |
| 27 | You are creating a database to track music compositions submitted for copyright to a large international copyright company. Copyrights might be acquired for every composition submitted, but a particular composer can submit only one composition of the same name at any time. You create a composer entity with a composer ID for the primary key. You also create a composition entity. Which of the following provides the best logical primary key for each row in the composition entity? | 35% | 33% | -2% |
| 28 | You are designing a logical model to track airline flights. In your system, an airplane is owned by one airline, and a flight would always be flown by one airplane. You create the following entities:&LF;• Airplane&LF;• Flight&LF;• Airline.&LF;In the following sentence diagrams, the arrows indicate a one-to-many relationship. Which of the following diagrams describes the relationship between these three entities that meets the scenario requirements? | 42% | 53% | 12% |
| 29 | A computer on your network with an unregistered IP address is unable to access a specific Internet Web site. After reproducing the problem on the computer several times, you try the same task on another computer connected to the same LAN and find that you can access the Web site. You then ping the Web server from the second computer to determine the Web site's IP address and try to connect from the malfunctioning computer by using the Web site's address instead of the server name. You can connect successfully using the IP address. Which of the following TCP/IP configuration parameters on the malfunctioning computer is probably incorrect? | 30% | 7% | -23% |
| 30 | You are designing an Internet access solution for an accounting firm whose workers require constant access to Web sites and e-mail during business hours. The company also maintains a Web site that receives heavy traffic from clients. The company works extremely long hours during tax season, which runs from January through April, but drops back to a standard eight-hour work day after April 15. Which of the following wide, area networking (WAN) technologies would provide the most flexible bandwidth service for this network? | 17% | 7% | -10% |
| 31 | You are designing a new TCP/IP network and you request a Class B network address from your ISP. The ISP gives you the following address: 131.107.0.0/16. You want to be able to create as many as 50 subnets of 1,000 hosts each on your new network, so you decide to allocate 6 bits to be used as the subnet identifier. Which of the following subnet masks should you use for the computers on your network? | 40% | 40% | 0% |
| 32 | You are developing an accounting application that includes a class named Transaction. Subclasses such as DepositTransaction and PaymentTransaction inherit from the Transaction class. The Transaction class includes a method named VerifyChecksum that should be available to the Transaction class and to all classes derived from the Transaction class, but not to any other classes in the application. Which access modifier should you use in the declaration of the VerifyChecksum method? | 50% | 36% | -14% |
| 33 | You are planning to display invoices on a DataGrid control. The user will specify a customer, and then you'll retrieve from the database all the invoices for that customer. Which database object should you use to retrieve these invoices? | 19% | 7% | -12% |
| 34 | Your application's main form contains two Button controls named btnA and btnB. When the user clicks on either of these controls, or when the user moves the mouse over either of these controls, you want to run code to display a message on the form. The message is identical in all cases. How should you structure your code to fulfill this requirement? | 15% | 47% | 31% |
| 35 | Which of the following event categories should you audit if you want to find out if an unauthorized person is trying to access a user account by entering random passwords or by using password-cracking software? | 54% | 93% | 39% |
| 36 | Which Microsoft Management Console (MMC) allows you to create and manipulate Active Directory organizational units (OUs)? | 35% | 67% | 32% |
| 37 | The total length of an IP address is __________ bits. |