why programming?

At the end of the meeting I have a quick chat with Doug (Director of BBIM) and Alison (Coordinator of BBIM) about the courses that I teach and also the discipline of information management (IM) in general. It has always been challenging to teach business students anything related to information technologies, and particularly difficult to teach programming. Students simply do not see any value of it.

Why do we teach programming in the BBIM?

Well to start with we would like to differentiate our degree with the more popular buisness degree BCOM under the same Business School. Our degree has a compulsory IM major, plus a second major in either Accounting or Marketing. The IM major is a strategic component in the degree to embrace information technologies that exist today or in the future, teach our students how they impact the business, society and every human being (e.g. Web 2.0). Programming is part of the major because we want to make sure our graduates can end up with a career in the IT field if they want to, or they can communicate well with software developers as a business consultant or analyst, or they can have their own startups etc. We have no intention to train them into hardcore programmers thou, as this is what computer science or software engineering are aiming to do. We just want them to be technical enough to act as solution provider to solve business problem related to IT, and in some cases they can “assemble” a software by writing some code together with external resources from here and there.

So the experience in programming is more for the sake to learn how to learn, rather than the context itself. We use .NET from Microsoft as our vehicle (well because we are fully supported by MSDNAA and a long partnering history with them), but our focus is on problem solving and innovation. This is my firm belief so far for the last 5 years to support my teaching, until recently I find only myself is thinking in that way.

Colleages in the IM discipline has other thoughts. They think that programming is too hard for the business students, and also for themselves too coz they are mostly researchers with no programming background. They treat IM as a supporting component in the BBIM, and perhaps Excel is what IM tool to them which can solve 90% of the business problem. Maybe they are right I dont know, but this creates a significant gap among my courses with theirs. Obviously if that continues I can end up being the most unpopular lecturer around the place, teaching something no one understands its value.

Should I insist to continue what I am doing? Is this the time to change? Alison is always worried about the relatively high failing rate in my course; and even Doug agrees with what I believe in but he claims that he does not have the required knowledge to make any judgement.

I think I should find a way to change how I define and structure my course, but for as long as I am teaching I will insist to teach programming. Not because I think .NET is going to rule the world, but because thru the learning process students would gain insights how to learn anything new in the technological world later on in their lives. They can challenge the status quo or even modify them. As it is well said in here – how lives for 5 years, why lives forever.

a moment of reflection

The first semester is finally over to me after the BBIM examiner meeting today, and I feel like to briefly summarize what I have done and experienced for the first half of 2007. I hestitate for a while because I read this some time ago about how to prevent your blog from sucking; but let’s be realistic – probably I am the only one who would read this blog anyway and so who really cares about that?

Officially I have been telling people that first semester was pretty tough for me. I was assigned to teach 4 courses in total with almost a 1000 students involved (normally my colleagues teach only 2 courses max in one semester); and I also took 2 courses myself from the Management Department in preparing for my PhD programme in the second semester. But is it really that bad? I mean honestly I still have time to play video games, watch heaps of TV series (i.e. finish with House season 3, Lost season 3, Heroes season 1, Scrubs season 6, 24 Season 6, D. Housewives season 3; and still watching Traveler season 1 and Studio 60 season 1 in the meanwhile) and movies (i.e. … just too many of them), and spent considerable amount of time with my girlfriend who would never agree to that anyway. Yeah perhaps if I have more time I could do better in my teaching and studies; but after knowing myself for almost 3 decades I think the most likely outcome is a longer period of procrastination and still the same results. So in some way making myself busy is actually a positive thing from an economic point of view, unless I am motivated by my internal values … which at the moment is only absolute laziness but nothing else that is productive.

Resolution? Hmm… I think I need to make things around me a bit more interesting to start with, like my courses or the research I am working on. Maybe I should include more people in those activities (coz I tend to work in isolation most of the time) so that either I can learn something from them that inspires me, or I can make fun of them. When I was struggling with my exam markings the last three days, my mind keeps on thinking about new stuff I can teach or new way of delivering them etc. I should get them into action, and revise my course completely to make it more challenging, even selfishly just for my own sake.

Students, get ready to be messed up, big time!

Okay this is short summary of what I have done in the first semester at uni, roughly:

1. Teaching INFOSYS110, INFOSYS120, INFOMGMT192 and INFOMGMT291. It is pretty neat to teach in the FPAA lecture theatre in our new Business School building, which seats 600 students with 2 gigantic screens (just like in a cinema) and fancy AV and computer equipments. Normally I dont use a microphone in lectures coz I do have a loud voice, but not for this one coz the room is just too big. INFOSYS120 is a new course but basically the content is very close to INFOMGMT192. Oh also I have organised a real-life project for INFOMGMT291 to build a fully featured website for a charity organisation. I should continue to have real-life project for next time as well.
2. Enrol in MGMT724 and MGMT737 as part of my PhD application. MGMT724 is a leadership course at postgraduate level, which changes my perspective about leadership in a lot of ways. I am lucky that I have chosen this course purely because it fits with my busy timetable initially, and it turns out to be a great learning experience and gives me a chance to meet the brillant professor and lecturer – Brad and Brigid. MGMT737 is a reading course with my supervisor Kenneth, who is perhaps the only person right now who can ask me to do something that I will actually finish it on time. Both courses involve lots of essay writings and literature reviews, but I guess I should get used to that if I am serious about my PhD later on.

Looking forward I would like to do the following before the start of next semester:

1. Finish my PhD proposal for enrolment, so that I can start the Doctorial Scholarship and change my contract to part-time, earning a salary around 30% of what I use to have for the next 3 years. Yeah, the road is tough but I am going to make it!
2. Revise the course structure for INFOMGMT192, employing new tutors and get them all excited to work for the course. Investigating new teaching techniques, and also see how I can incorporate new material like WPF into the course that only teaches VB for now.
3. Reserve some time to start a commercial project via TechNet, so that I can have a few months of electricity or groceries….
4. Pick up a new sport and start to do exercise more regularly

Yeah I feel boring even just write them out, I should do them instead of planning. Let’s see how that goes.