Faculty Contact Information:
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Consultation:
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The instructor will be available after class on Saturday and Sunday.
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Required Texts and Readings:
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Englander, I. (2003). Architecture of Computer Hardware & Systems Software, (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.
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Supplementary Readings:
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The standard for papers in the graduate program is the APA style. All participants in this course and all graduate INSS, MGMT, PUAD, and ECON courses should have a copy of the style guide:
American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th Edition. Washington DC: Author. All graduate students should be prepared to utilize the UMUC online library at http://www.ed.umuc.edu/library/. The library contains a large number of full text academic journals that are free of charge and immediately available. The library homepage also contains a number of links related to improving students' research and writing skills.
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Recommended Journals:
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Publications of the various professional societies (such as ACM -- the Association for Computing Machinery, the IEEE Computing Society, and the various management professional societies) are strongly recommended. In addition, there are many trade journals (such as eWEEK) that MIS professionals should become familiar with, many of these being published both weekly and on-line.
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Course Description:
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3 semester hours credit. Prerequisites: Undergraduate programming and college algebra, or permission of the Program Director. Provides an overview of basic computer concepts as they apply to MIS professionals. Emphasis is on basic machine architecture including data storage, manipulation, the human-machine interface including the basics of operating systems, algorithms and programming languages. In addition, the basic concepts of data organization including data and file structures are examined. Emerging trends in computer technology and their impact on organizational information systems are also discussed.
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Course Goals:
Upon completion of the course, participants should:
1. Understand basic principles of computer architecture
2. Understand major operating system concepts, including the interrelationships between operating systems and computer hardware
3. Understand concepts of programming languages
4. Understand computer logic and data representation
5. Be conversant with the terminology describing computer hardware and software
6. Understand how computer peripherals work
7. Understand basics of network architectures
8. Understand new developments in computer technology
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Course Objectives:
At the conclusion of this course the student will be able to:
1. Define the basic terms and processes related to computer systems architecture
2. Discuss components of an operating system
3. Describe the mechanisms by which an operating system manages hardware and software resources
4. Describe progression of operating system development
5. Describe the various types of programming languages
6. Describe the processes of translating and executing a program
7. Describe the process for developing applications
8. Describe basic methods of data representation
9. Describe the characteristics of data storage technology and how it influences the performance of computer systems
10. Describe the use of buffers and caches to improve computer system performance
11. Describe the use of data compression to improve computer system performance
12. Describe the concepts of file systems
13. Describe the characteristics and implementation of input and output devices
14. Describe the basic concepts of communication protocols
15. Summarize the advantages and disadvantages of distributed computing systems
16. Describe the technological trends in computer development
17. Discuss ethical issues in computing
18. Research current topics in computing
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Grading Information:
Final grades will be calculated as follows:
Programs 20%
Exam 1 (Sep 9) 25%
Exam 2 (Sep 23) 25%
Exam 3 (Oct 8) 30%
Final grades will be assigned according to the following scale.
A [90, 100]
B [80, 90)
C [70, 80)
F [0, 70)
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Course Requirements:
Graduate school at the masters level focuses on helping students obtain the education needed for success as professionals in their chosen fields. Thus, UMUC-Europe Graduate Programs and Bowie State University share the common goals of promoting excellence in academic scholarship through thoughtful inquiry and the skillful application of knowledge and theory for the betterment of society.
Students are expected to complete the assigned programming projects. Programs will be assigned during the first, second and third weekend meetings and are due on Saturday morning of the next weekend meeting.
Exams lasting 90 mintes will be given on Saturday morning of the second and third weekend meetings, and a comprehensive final exam lasing 3 hours will be given on Sunday afternoon of the last weekend meeting. The exams will consist primarily of problems similar to those at the end of each chapter in the text. Problems will be assigned as preparation for each exam at the meeting preceeding the exam. Solutions to those problems will also be distributed at that time.
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Description of Course Requirements:
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Participate in classroom discussions: You are expected to come to class prepared to engage in all discussions in a professional and informed manner. Usually this requires two to three hours for every hour class.
Complete graduate level programming assignments. You are required to conduct professional-level research, including appropriately citing works of others and avoiding plagiarism. Resubmission of course work from previous classes (whether or not taken at UMUC, UMUC-Europe or BSU), partially or in its entirety, is not acceptable in this course and will result in an automatic failure on the assignment.
Orally/visually present prepared material: You are required to present your results in a professional manner. In a face-to-face course, this typically means an oral presentation accompanied by appropriate visual material. In a DE class, this means creating a visual/textual presentation for your instructor and classmates.
Complete one or more written examination(s): The examination process in this class will assist you in developing the writing and critical thinking skills necessary for successfully passing the comprehensive exam required of all graduate students. The examination questions used for this course will either be taken directly from past comprehensive exams or written as though to be included on a comprehensive exam.
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Course Schedule:
All chapter references are to the course text, Englander.
Weekend 1 (Aug 26/27)
Saturday AM 9-12
- Introductions
- Review of Syllabus
- Clarification of goals, objectives and requirements
- Orientation to the subject
- Overview of Computer Systems
Reading: Chapter 1
Saturday PM (1-4)
- Number Systems
- The related number systems bases 2, 8 and 16
- Numeric conversions between number bases
Reading: Chapter 2
Sunday AM (9-12)
- Data Formats
- Alphanumeric Character Data
- Image Data
- Other types of data
Reading: Chapter 3
Sunday PM (1-4)
- Representing Integer Data
- One's Complement and Two's Complement representations
- Arithmetic using Two's complement representations
Readings: Chapter 4
Weekend 2 (Sep 16/17)
Saturday AM (9-12)
- Exam 1
- Floating Point Numbers
- Normalization and Formatting of Floating Point Numbers
- The IEEE 754 Standard
- Arithmetic using floating point representation
Reading: Chapter 5
Saturday PM (1-4)
- The Little Man Computer
- Operation of the Little Man Computer
- Sample Programs using the Little Man Computer
Readings: Englander Chapter 6
The Little Man Computer can be downloaded from
http://www.cba.uri.edu/faculty/vvm/
(The instructor will distribute a "key" to make the program really operable.)
This site also has a lot of information about the program.
Another site with information:
http://www.atkinson.yorku.ca/~sychen/research/LMC/LMCHome.html
Sunday AM (9-12)
- The CPU and Memory
- Components of the CPU
- The Memory Unit
- The Fetch-Execute Instruction Cycle
- Instruction word formats
Readings: Chapter 7
Sunday PM (1-4)
- CPU Architecture, CISC and RISC
- Paging
- Memory Enhancements
- Modern CPU Prcessing methods
Reading: Chapter 9 and Section 15.6
Weekend 3 (Sep 30/Oct 1)
Saturday AM (9-12)
- Exam 2
- Input/Output Devices
- Interrupts
- Bus Architecture
- Peripherals
Readings: Chapter 9
Saturday PM (1-4)
- The Hierarchy of Storage
- Displays and Printers
Readings: Chapter 10
Sunday AM (9-12)
- An overview of Operating Systems
- What the operating system does
- The Bootstrap
- Some history of operating systems
Reading: Chapter 13
Sunday PM (1-4)
- The User View of the Operating System
- Purpose of the User interface
- User functions
- Types of User interfaces
- Command and scripting languages
Reading: Chapter 14
Weekend 4 (Oct 14/15)
Saturday AM (9-12)
- The internal operating system
- Processes and threads
- CPU scheduling
- Memory management
- Virtual storage
Readings: Chapters 15
Saturday PM (1-4)
- File Management
- Logical and physical views of files
- Logical access
- Physical file storage
- The directory structure
Reading: Chapter 16
Sunday AM (9-12)
- Programming Tools
- Program Editors
- Program Translation
- Assemblers
- Metalanguages
- Linking and loading
Reading: Chapter 17
Sunday PM (1-4)
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Academic Policies:
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The University has a license agreement with Turnitin.com, a service that helps prevent plagiarism from internet resources. I may be using this service in this class by either requiring students to submit their papers electronically to Turnitin.com or by submitting questionable text on behalf of a student. If you or I submit part or all of your paper, it will be stored by Turnitin.com in their database throughout the term of the University's contract with Turnitin.com. If you object to this temporary storage of your paper, you must let me know no later than two weeks after the start of this class. Please Note: If you object to the storage of your paper on Turnitin.com, I may utilize other services to check your work for plagiarism The official university policy on Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty can be found at http://www.umuc.edu/policy/aa15025.shtml. Section I.C. states: "Faculty may determine if the resubmission of course work from previous classes (whether or not taken at UMUC), partially or in its entirety, is acceptable when assigning a grade on that piece of course work. Faculty must provide this information in their written syllabi. If the resubmission of course work is deemed to be unacceptable, a charge may not be brought under this Policy and will be handled as indicated in the written syllabi."
Please refer to Description of Course Requirements for specific information on how resubmissions will be treated in this course and to the UMUC-Europe Graduate Catalog for information on the following:
Academic Integrity
Course Load
Exception to Policy
Grade Appeal Process
Make-up Examinations
Nondiscrimination
Students with Disabilities
Code of Civility
Hard copies of the catalog are available at your local Education Center.
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Faculty Bio:
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John Keohane earned his BA in Mathematics from Bowdoin College and his MS and PhD in Computer Science from SUNY at Stony Brook. He has been teaching at the college/university level for 28 years, more than 11 of which have been with the European Division of UMUC, where he holds the rank of full professor.
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