Overview
I chose to pursue MIS because I enjoy working with businesses to solve problems. So many of those problems are how to wrangle data. Whether it’s learning from it, helping employees to interact with it, or sharing it with customers, these activities are so central, that whenever you’re working on these issues, you’re really working on the heart of the business. I love being in the thick of it, so learning to manage these was a natural choice for me.
MIS 3504 – Digital Design & Innovation
We worked with the Pennsylvania Ballet to design a digital playbill. We interviewed key stakeholders and came up with a prototype based on their feedback. This class focused on how to gather business requirements and validate that you are, in fact, creating the right solution for the client. I’ve found a few times that I’ve designed something based off assumptions that weren’t correct, and have had to redo it later. Remembering and incorporating the steps we took in 3504 will help me to limit those types of rework.
MIS 3535 – Change Leadership Studios
In this class we took on the role of project managers, and guided those in 3504 through their process. We simulated a real project in MS Project and learned how to create reports and track progress. I’ve generally worked on smaller teams where things are more informally managed, so it was useful to practice working with tools where you can track almost any variable.
MIS 2502 – Data Analytics
This was my first class in the technical side of MIS. We learned about relational databases and SQL statements. Since then I’ve built on these skills many times over. I enjoyed this class a lot since I was so quickly able to see the power in knowing how to design and query databases.
MIS 3501 & 3502 – Application Design
I’ve really enjoyed exploring the technical classes within the MIS major. I like understanding how to build the solutions that we discuss creating in the other classes. If you understand the technical challenges involved, you can make different design choices and avoid a lot of pitfalls compared to a non-technical person.