The BBIM Blog

Nine Nontechie Skills that Hiring Managers Wish You Had

2007-11-21T12:47:00.001+13:00

Computerworld has an interesting article that lists 9 skills that hiring managers wish IT people had.

These are:

1. Writing ability. Communication skills are a requisite for IT workers, says Tom Casey, senior vice president and architect of the workforce transformation practice at BSG Concours, a Kingwood, Texas-based consultancy. Many community colleges and online universities offer continuing education courses on business writing, says Robert Keefe, incoming president of the Society for Information Management (SIM) and senior vice president and CIO at Mueller Water Products Inc. in Atlanta.

2. An understanding of business-process mapping and tools. “If there’s one group in the company that needs to excel at process mapping, it’s the IT group,” says John Roulat, vice president of IT at Carl Zeiss Inc., a Thornwood, N.Y.-based medical technology manufacturer.

Although flowcharts can be used, swim charts, which offer a visual depiction of how business processes flow across functional areas, are very effective, he says. Roulat says there are “books galore” on the subject, but he recommends bringing in consultants to train IT workers on how to use swim charts.

3. An aptitude for public speaking. They may be a throwback to the 1960s, but Toastmasters International clubs can help IT workers refine their public speaking skills and get past their jitters. Also, SIM’s Regional Leadership Forum can help up-and-coming IT professionals polish their leadership skills, including their speaking ability, says Keefe.

4. An understanding of accounting. Universities, training firms and even professional organizations such as Omicron, an Atlanta-based consortium of IT associations, offer courses in accounting and financial principles. Alternatively, in-house financial experts from a company’s accounting or finance department can offer tutorials to IT professionals, says Roulat.

These skills are a great start, but most IT managers want to see even more in their potential hires. Hiring managers say they also look for attributes like entrepreneurism, intellectual curiosity and traits like these:

5. The ability to work well with a team. “Anyone can muscle their way through an already overburdened IT group,” says Roulat. But a person who is able to gain consensus and sell an idea “not only gets the job done, but makes the group stronger,” he adds. Still, it’s not easy identifying and finding people with these traits. “You have to see how they do in the field,” he says.

6. Initiative. “Being a small [IT] shop, I like to hire people who have demonstrated they can deliver without constant oversight,” says David Dart, regional head of IT at HSH Nordbank AG in New York, where he oversees a 10-person staff. Dart says his management style is to create a vision or a goal and allow his staff to “make it happen without too much supervision.”

7. An inquisitive mind. IT professionals “need to be able to learn on their own” and acquire needed skills through a variety of venues, including online classes, blogs and networking sites, says Roni Krisavage, vice president of IT at World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. in Stamford, Conn.

8. The ability to get a point across. IT professionals should possess not only an ability to speak to business people in terms they understand, but also strong writing skills and a talent for conversing with people who are in a variety of roles, says Didi Raizen, IT applications manager at Flatiron Construction Corp. in Longmont, Colo. While these types of skills can be developed, some people are just natural-born communicators, notes Raizen.

She encountered people like that at a previous job she had as manager of globalization software at J.D. Edwards & Co. There, a team of business analysts and nontechnical workers she oversaw “blew me away with the recommendations they came up with to solve problems on a low-scale budget,” says Raizen. “Those types of folks are difficult to find.”

9. A willingness to take risks. “I believe the modern IT person is more of an IT entrepreneur,” since he is constantly looking to improve upon existing ways of doing things or identify other business and operational opportunities, says Roulat. He notes how the increasing use of Web-based applications and open architectures is providing opportunities for IT organizations to present approaches that are affordable, quick to implement and disposable.

Information R/evolution

2007-10-23T05:43:00.001+13:00

The Wikipedia Gap

2007-10-19T06:29:00.000+13:00

One of my favourite blogs is authored by marketing guru Seth Godin.

One of his recent posts is about Wikipedia and it sort of resonates with some of the conversations we have at University about it.

I'll reproduce it here:

I wonder who the first teacher was who said to his class, "Okay, we have ball point pens now. No need to use class time to learn how to use a fountain pen."

I heard from two people this week (one is 11, the other twice that) who were forbidden to use Wikipedia to do homework.

When I was in b-school, I admit that I discovered a shortcut. I had to write a long paper on Castro. I went to the magnificent Stanford library, found a great book on Castro, opened to the bibliography and found ten sources. Which I then laboriously paged through, spending hours and hours in order to find the facts I needed.

Then, facts in hand, I was able to do the actually useful part... I synthesized some new ideas and wrote a paper.

Apparently, going through the act of finding the books, sorting through them, reading a lot of chaff and eventually finding the facts is an essential skill for an 11-year-old kid. And for a college sophomore. Essential enough to be responsible for 80% of the time they spend on the work itself?

Selecting the facts is an important part of the process. Finding them shouldn't be.

I don't know about you, but when I hire someone, or go to the doctor or the architect or an engineer, I could care less about how good they are at memorizing or looking up facts. I want them to be great at synthesizing ideas, the faster and more insightfully, the better.

Until just recently, law students had to learn a painstaking process to look up cases by hand. No longer. The academy realized that teaching students to be great at Lexis was a smart idea.

Please don't tell me that Wikipedia isn't a real encyclopedia or one that can't be trusted. Perhaps it can't be trusted if you're prepping for a Presidential debate, but it is sure good enough to help me learn what I need to learn--which is how to quickly take a bunch of facts and turn them into a new and useful idea.

Here's what just about every exam ought to be: "Use Firefox to find the information you need to answer this question:" And as the internet gets smarter, the questions are going to have to get harder. Which is a good thing.

Until teachers get unstuck, our kids are going to be stuck and so will we.

YouTube Video Wizard

2007-10-19T06:27:00.000+13:00

Use this to insert YouTube videos into a PowerPoint slide.

All you need to do is to provide the YouTube video URL that appears in the browser address bar, the rest is taken care of by the YTV Wizard.

Berkeley Courses on YouTube

2007-10-05T11:28:00.000+13:00

Since 2002 I have "attended" many courses in MIT via their OpenCourseWare website and I believe they are the first top University to publish courses online for free. By that time the only thing they are lacking of is multimedia support for the lectures (which they are getting better and better these days), which sometimes I switch to iTunes' podcast for audio/video of lectures or seminars from Stanford or others.

I guess this is not an entire a new idea - UC Berkeley have built a customized portal site in youtube for all their video lectures. Yes it is very easy to create different "interest group" in youtube to put a bunch of videos together; but taking one more step further and make it into a customized page would reflect how much they value this platform in delivering their contents. This provides a better user experience, and help to lift their number of subscriptions and views.

http://www.youtube.com/ucberkeley

Is the BBIM fuzzy?

2007-09-18T14:47:00.001+12:00

World Clock

2007-07-04T15:44:00.000+12:00

Check this out, pretty fun to look at with all those extra information

From technical mastery to conceptual mastery

2007-06-30T02:08:00.001+12:00

Constantly I am thinking about the positioning of IM in the our degree, and whether it makes sense of what I am teaching and contributing. Despite the differences I may have with other staff in defining what we should teach in IM courses, I find this piece of article that basically summarizes a lot of points that I firmly believe in. Especially I like the last sentence with - how lasts for five years, but why is forever.

This is the article, hope you enjoy it - Why is Forever

Microsoft research Tablet-Based Computing Projects

2007-06-08T15:21:00.000+12:00

The Tablet PC for faculty- A pilot project

2007-06-08T13:50:00.000+12:00

Tablet PC's as a teaching tool - links

2007-06-08T13:06:00.000+12:00

Tablet pc’s as a teaching tool

Trials
Tablet pc's, Penn Stat trial
The trial is designed to investigate the potential benefits and challenges encountered by students and faculty members when using Tablet PCs. Faculty and students to complete a survey before and after the semester and also report any issues encountered using the Table PCs throughout the semester.Throughout these two semesters, the applications used, functions performed, benefits gained, and challenges faced by the users will be documented and explored so that future applications of Tablet PCs within educational environments can be better designed
http://www.engr.psu.edu/ae/cic/projects/tablet_pc.aspx?p=24

Paper on the Tablet pc trial at Penn State with the online survey
http://fie.engrng.pitt.edu/fie2006/papers/1683.pdf

In this study students are given a TPC for the class session, (could this work for a small BBIM class?)
http://web-cat.cs.vt.edu/tablets/

TPC’s use by students, TPC links
http://www.merrimack.edu/~vpoteat/tablet.htm

Articles on teaching with TPC’s
Tablet power
http://www.cer.jhu.edu/index.cfm?pageID=364#2

Tablet pc substitute?
http://studenttabletpc.com/2007/05/a_tablet_pc_substitute.html

McGill laptop tablet programme
http://www.mcgill.ca/cio/computer/academic/

Collaborative learning & tablets
http://portal.cetadl.bham.ac.uk/ilogbook/Public/InteractiveLogbookResearchPaper25thJune.pdf

Tablet PCs: A Powerful Teaching Tool R Cicchino, D Mirliss - Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, …, 2004
http://technology.shu.edu/WEBS/tech/MainEngine.nsf/doITPresentations/737A314F8E0E6E4585256F66006B619C/$file/ElearnPaperfinal.doc

Learning with Tablet PCs: True Learning Tools or Trendy Devices
By Cyprien LomasUlrich Rauch
Tablet PCs have arrived on our campuses: appealing, lightweight devices that have all the features of laptops plus the option of pen-based or keyboard entry. But even with their obvious potential for mobile computing applications, their best uses in classrooms are yet to be defined.

http://isit.arts.ubc.ca/uli/Syllabus2003/Syllabus_TabletPC-article.doc

Using a tablet PC has given my academic writing a new lease of lifeAA Baddeley, AA Baddeley - Blackwell Synergy

Using the Tablet PC for InstructionC our FAQ, R Zone - Decision Sciences The Journal of Innovative Education, 2007 - ingentaconnect.com

Whattya Mean it’s Not All About Me? Involving Undergraduate MIS Students in an Analysis of a Tablet …P Sendall - isedj.org

TEACHING BRIEF Using the Tablet PC for InstructionWISAT PC - Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, 2007 - Blackwell Synergy
Exploring Tablet PCs. - all 4 versions »L Godsall, L Crescimano, R Blair - Learning & Leading with Technology, 2005 - questia.com

Using podcasts and tablet PCs in computer scienceBL Kurtz, JB Fenwick Jr, CC Ellsworth - Proceedings of the 45th annual southeast regional conference, 2007 - portal.acm.org

Faculty Perceptions OF Tablet PC S For Teaching, Research, & Service: AC OLLEGE OF Business …PH Schwager, JE Anderson, RL Kerns - Southern Association of Information Systems Conference, 2005 - sais.aisnet.org

Lecture Presentation from the Tablet PC R Anderson, R Anderson, C Hoyer, B Simon, F Videon … - Workshop on Advance Collaborative Environments, 2003 - sandiego.edu

CQU video on using Tablets in teaching
http://fahe.cqu.edu.au/FCWViewer/view.do?page=2513

BBIMers at work

2007-06-07T13:58:00.000+12:00

It's good to see that our students actually learnt something from our Digital Media course. :)

Education and web 2.0

2007-06-07T10:43:00.000+12:00

Just read a couple of article online and they both emphasize how important it is for educators to incorporate the concept of web 2.0 in their teaching. Personally I cannot agree more since the Internet is no longer just a tool to us, it is in fact part of us. Treating technology as a separate subject area is not exactly going to work well anymore.

FYI

To fix education, think Web 2.0
Web 2.0, a new wave of innovation for teaching and learning
Web 2.0 is taught in Oxford

Economist article on changing Business School curriculum

2007-05-30T10:12:00.000+12:00

The article describes changes in business school curriculum so that students have better marketable skills upon graduation. Instead of the traditional methods of teaching functional subjects such as marketing and strategy, students at Yale University are now learning by different themes such as the customer or the investor. The teaching of ethics is important in business schools especially after the corporate scandals at Enron and WorldCom. Enrollment has increased in business schools worldwide.

The Ideas Database

2007-05-29T14:59:00.000+12:00

This might help students come up with entrepreneurial ideas!

http://www.springwise.com/ideas/

Article on integrated undergraduate courses

2007-05-29T14:55:00.000+12:00

Journal of Management Education, Vol. 30, No. 2, 276-294 (2006) The Organizational Behavior Teaching Society
Interdisciplinary, Team-Taught, Undergraduate Business Courses: The Impact of Integration
http://jme.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/30/2/276

Bib me BBIM

2007-05-16T12:16:00.000+12:00

Web site BibMe helps you create and download a bibliography with minimal time and effort. The nice thing about it is that it has an AutoFill mode that lets you search for a book or other source online and fill in all the relevant info with the click of a mouse.

World's greatest presentations

2007-05-08T13:02:00.000+12:00

Slideshare.net had a "World's greatest presentation" competition recently.

You can see the finalists here.

I thought the top two were particularly relevant to what we are doing in the BBIM.

>

Interesting approach to a website

2007-04-07T10:41:00.000+12:00

An author tries to push her book here.

Push for computer skills licence

2007-03-21T12:35:00.000+12:00

The New Zealand Herald has an interesting article about IT in schools.

Secondary schools and employers keen to circumnavigate shortcomings in the secondary school computing curriculum can now turn to the International Computer Driving Licence (ICDL). Modelled loosely on the concept of gaining a car driver's licence, ICDL students pass a test based on IT course content before certification is awarded.

Back in the day we used to use the ICDL as the basis of our curriculmn in INFO191. Goes to show how rapidly things change.

Pam Martin, managing director of ICDL test centre Extra Mile Training, says employers want meaningful IT qualifications.

"At present there is an assumption that all students leave school with sound computer skills. Unfortunately, this isn't the case and many employers have limited computer skills themselves so find it difficult to gauge how competent job applicants are," says Martin. "An ability to look confident and push buttons doesn't mean an applicant has the skills required in a work situation. Using a chat room isn't the same as writing a business letter or managing business email."

Sometimes our students don't know the difference between these activities as well.

Linda Brown, HR trainer for the Tauranga City Council says taking five of the seven ICDL modules is now mandatory for permanent staff members.

"We link it directly to performance reviews. It is imperative that our staff keep up to date in order to make the best use of our computer systems and that we are seen to obtain value for money in the use of our computer technology," says Brown.

She says noticeable benefits include improved communication, team support, skills sharing, problem solving, less reliance on the IT help desk, improved customer service delivery, an improved work culture and a feeling that the employer takes an interest in and generally cares about staff.

I thought this snippet was quite interesting as well.

Learning from MIT

2007-03-14T11:07:00.000+13:00

the wonderful librarian from MER sent this out to the dept and it may be of use to BBIM staff revising course descriptions:

MIT puts entire curriculum at disposal of e-learners:

"The entire catalogue of information from 1,800 courses at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will be available free online by the end of the year. Once uploaded, it will represent one of the internet’s most important resources."

Source : Information World Review 23 Feb 2007

Late breaking news...

2007-03-08T20:11:00.000+13:00

You'll all be pleased to know that the Staff team (wwwogws) crushed all student opposition in the inaugral BBIM pub quiz.

The BBIM Song

2007-03-08T16:17:00.001+13:00

First Lecture in INFOSYS 110

2007-02-28T15:35:00.000+13:00

I had just finished my 3 streams of INFOSYS 110 first lecture where I only took a few minutes to introduce myself in front of the class. The course is taught by a team of lecturers and I am responsible for 1/3 of the course. The total enrolment of the class is huge (i.e. 750 students) and it is good for me to teach a big class again (coz I used to teach this course before I moved to BBIM).

All other lecturers are very well prepared, they have slides and jokes etc. I didnt prepare anything (substantially) and so after those common introductory, I let them ask any questions they want. The first stream was great, they ask lots of questions and so it becomes very funny and enjoyable for both myself and the rest of them. One student asks if I go to conferences like Michael Myers (he is part of the lecturer team and he talks about visiting the world when he introduces himself), and I explain to them that under the current acaedmic food chain (i.e. P > AP> SL > L > Students > me) I would be the last person to have a chance to go after the students. I even try to sell BBIM as well during my introduction :)

Unfortunately the same tactic doesnt work for the 2nd and 3rd streams. They are all very dull and non-responsive. In the last one they dont even willing to ask a single question. This is actually the very first time I feel such a difference in behaviour between the BBIM students and the BCom students. Even thou sometimes I hate my INFOMGMT class being too noisy as they talk, ask, laugh etc all the time; yet it is simply too quiet in the BCom for majority of the students there today.

Let's see how that goes for the remaining weeks.

Johnny

BBIM 1, BCOM 0

2007-02-19T14:59:00.000+13:00

A BSc(CS)/BCom(IS) fourth year student came to express an interest to take our INFO291 course. Even there are less demanding courses in the BCom, the student is still keen to do our INFO course! I consider this to be a happy tiny mini victory for us, hehe :)

Johnny

Are Australian freshmen really digital natives?

2007-02-14T09:55:00.000+13:00

This is a very interesting study done the University of Melbourne in Australia: First year students’ experience with technology: are they really digital natives?

Grading policy

2007-02-14T07:26:00.000+13:00

In interests of speed and efficiency, I think we should adopt the grading policy that is described here.

INFO291 - Web 2.0

2007-02-13T15:29:00.000+13:00

Just find this cool video from YouTube that basically summarizes what I am teaching in INFO291! I am going to show this to the students in the first lecture :)

Johnny

BBIM purpose

2007-02-13T14:42:00.000+13:00

Here is version 01 of the BBIM purpose that I sent via email on 12th Feb '07 for comment:

The BBIM teaching unit aims to provide learning experiences that prepare graduates who will succeed in a knowledge society.

Knowledge-intensive work involves uncertainty, ambiguity and constant challenges to traditional ways of working. We embrace these qualities and are committed to developing a teaching unit that reflects them in the way we run our undergraduate teaching program.

The BBIM cohort-based model is unique because students experience an integrated business-information management curriculum which uses innovative pedagogies to reflect business-in-practice. Through hands-on experience students learn how cross-disciplinary collaboration creates synergy and drives innovation.

The BBIM teaching unit is dedicated to maintaining a collaborative culture that supports innovative pedagogies for interdisciplinary teaching and learning.