COURSE RUBRIC: FIS 431 – Analysis of Financial Systems

COURSE DESCRIPTION: Students should be capable of using the knowledge acquired in this course to analyze modern, technologically relevant financial information systems. The Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is used as the course’s logical framework, while the Information Engineering set of methodologies is used to analyze real-world business systems, using an integrated systems SDLC toolset.

PREREQUISITES: FIS 318

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

• To prepare advanced activity models
• To prepare advanced interaction models
• To construct advanced entity relationship diagrams
• To generate data definition language
• To apply the SDLC framework to simulate advanced real-life planning and analysis situations

MAJOR TOPICS:  Using the Model-Oriented Tool-Enhanced (MOTE) approach to financial information systems of global enterprises
                                  Performing Interaction Analysis
                                  Using a SDLC toolset to create Organization Hierarchy Diagrams
                                  Using a SDLC toolset to create Activity Models
                                  Using a SDLC toolset to create Data Models
                                  Using a SDLC toolset to create Process Action Diagrams
                                  Generating Data Definition Language to structure a relational database

COURSE INCLUDES:

Information Technology: The students make use of information technology throughout this course, which is conducted in a computer laboratory. Each student has a computer. Students use an integrated software development toolset (e.g., Oracle’s Designer or Advantage Gen by Computer Associates) to analyze business systems and structure relational databases.

Oral Communication: All students are required to participate in class discussions in each class. This is an essential component of learning with cases. For each class session, a class participation sheet is completed on which each student records his or her "best" verbal comment or contribution made during class. This is handed to the instructor at the end of class for grading. Students also present their case findings to the class.

Writing Skills: Students complete weekly assignments, which contain written components.

Critical Thinking: The case-based approach builds critical thinking skills. Each week, students sift through a lot of information. They are required the extract the information that is important for solving the case questions.

Problem Solving: Students use the information they believe is relevant to make decisions about cases and other assignments. Students are required to justify their solutions.

Team Building: After doing individual case preparation at home, students are assigned to small groups to discuss the individual analyses and reach small group solutions. Also, students work in groups of two or three on a semester-long case project.

Globalization: As the focus of Analysis is to model enterprise systems, and these systems are global, globalization issues are an inherently addressed. Specifically, cultural and legal differences, among countries where the global enterprise conducts commerce, and reflecting different business rules, are discussed.