Tuesday

More about systems

Congratulations with the successful start of the course (since you are reading this post :) ! I noticed that most of you are in various biz majors (mainly marketing) as well as other non-IT ones. Therefore you might learn a few useful things here.

This course is designed to enhance/offer an understanding in systems theory and information systems and technologies in particular. The first week is may be the most important since you are getting here the fundamentals of the "so-called" systems vision. Regardless of the variety of entities and processes surrounding you in your personal or organizational lives, a stunning discovery has been made by Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy - the founder of the General System Theory (GST) - that they all are systems. More than that, there can be created a science that can cover all types of systems as having common properties, features, and traits. Therefore, learning and understanding anything as a system allows to apply such most generally applicable knowledge to all situations. Since then the theory has been evolving and now many organizations require from their leading employees "systems thinking" as ability to apply GST to any situation of any kind that they encounter.

After you get familiar with the main systems concepts we move to the applications of this theory to a specific type of systems – information systems (IS) and information technologies (IT). You will often find a term ICT (information and communication technologies) instead of IT. And finally, we will move to the role of IS/ICT in business and organizational systems. The Information Systems major in the Business School (has a minor too) offers students a professional grasp of the most general and widely useful knowledge, which nowadays is being used in all organizations/jobs – IS/ICT. With deeper knowledge and skills in this area students learn of how to dramatically enhance individual abilities by using various methods, skills, and tools that are offered in the major in order to enhance personal ability of consistently making best decisions under all circumstances, of how to put artificial intelligence to your personal and organizational service, of how to design systems that are the most important competitive resource for individuals and organizations, and how to develop electronic businesses and start-ups. This course offers you a glimpse (although important) into the IS/ICT world.

As one of the extensions of the IS activities we offer a completely online Web Development Certificate Program (just like Business Essentials) increasing your knowledge and skills in developing modern Web-based systems, sites, and organizations. This course might be a good foundation for this program.

There is a lot more to the systems theory than we can fit into this course. Such areas a Complex Systems Theory, Dynamic Systems Theory, Chaos, fractal systems, and Theory of Catastrophes are some of the more specific areas that being actively used in economics, finance, business, marketing analysis, medical and biological studies.

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