This paper, co-authored with Amy Lavin, shared with the academic community our approach to teaching an intro MIS course using no textbook, a flipped classroom and activity based learning to transform a traditional lecture course to a course that focuses on discussion, active learning which challenges a student’s critical thinking skills, not just their ability to memorize. This paper was accepted by AIS and presented at their annual conference in August, 2016 in San Diego, California.
Death to Course in a Box
Death to Course in a Box Presentation
This paper, co-authored with James Moustafellos, shared with the academic community our use of studios and vertical studios in MIS education. While studios and vertical studios are common in schools of Art and schools of Architecture, they are virtually non-existent in schools of Business. Our unique approach to teaching students to be both business analysts and project managers is described in this paper. This paper was accepted by AIS and presented at their annual conference in August, 2015 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Vertical Studios in Business Education
Vertical Studios in Business Education Presentation
This paper, co-authored with David Schuff, compared the then mainstream curriculum taught in MIS programs around the world with the MIS program taught at the Fox School which was radically redesigned in 2011 and highlighted and explained the many flaws with the traditional approach to MIS education. This paper was accepted by AIS and presented at their annual conference in August 2012 in Seattle, Washington.
IS2010 – Looking Through the Windshield or in the Rear-view Mirror
IS2010 – Looking Through the Windshield or in the Rear-view Mirror Presentation
This paper described a technology project which I worked on with a high-performing undergraduate student where we utilized virtual machine technology to create a virtual network that was used to demonstrate countless networking concepts. This paper was accepted by the Association for Information Systems (AIS) in December of 2007 and presented at their annual conference which was held in Montreal, Canada.
A paper by Frank Azuola and Mart Doyle which highlights an innovative new event management systems which is supporting Temple’s ERP system has been accepted for publication by Educause Quarterly http://www.educause.edu/eq. The title of the paper is “Complex Systems…Simplified Operations”. The abstract which describes the paper and a few video clips which go along with the paper can be found below.
Abstract
The days of the mainframe with a single centralized console are long gone. As organizations adopt distributed systems, operations organizations must deal with new challenges. From network monitors to alerts from various hardware components to job scheduling systems, an operator has too many technologies to oversee. As users demand access to applications 24×7, staffing an operations center with operators who have the required skill set to work with this collection of technology could be a difficult challenge or an unrealistic expectation.
In this paper, we discuss an event management system which, in conjunction with monitoring tools capable of issuing SNMP traps or of collecting logs generated by systems, serves as a centralized console for distributed environments. To ground our discussion, we refer to the actual implementation of such system as the event management console of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) environment.
In the summer of 2009, Temple University went live with SunGard’s ERP Banner Finance module. Up until this point in time, the university’s key administrative systems had been mainframe based. Operations and support of the mainframe systems had been carried out by an outsourced group. As part of the deployment of the SunGard Banner environment, an operations center was created and staffed with Temple personnel to run the new ERP systems.
Faced with the challenges of monitoring a wide range of diverse system components with a small crew of operators who had little or no experience with distributed technologies, it soon became apparent that an event management solution would be needed. This event management solution came to light in the form of a centralized event monitoring tool.
This tool would act as the focal point where all the alerts issued by all the components of the ERP environment would be captured and appropriately processed. Next, we describe the architecture of the event management tool, as well as the relevant details of the actual deployment of this tool into production.
Videos:
Tim O’Rourke, Vice President, Computer and financial Services & CIO on the value created by this system