Task Summary
Assessment 3 consists of two Parts. Part A requires student to develop and video record an information system policy pitch for 10 minutes. The pitched policy must be pertaining to an aspect of managing information systems.
Please refer to the Task Instructions for details on how to complete this task.
Context
This individual assignment is designed to develop student’s capability to manage the various aspect of information systems through information systems policies. Information system policy and procedures are developed, implemented and administered to help organisations to streamline the processes in the acquisition, development, implementation and operation of information systems adopted in the organisations and mitigate potential risks pertaining to the usage of information systems. Students are expected to consider the legal, ethical and social issues in the development of information system policies. Through this assignment, students will demonstrate not only their critical analysis skills but also the ability to formulate policy and pitch the same to the client through video presentation and a short policy write-up.
Instructions:
Background
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ABC University (ABCU) has developed a sophisticated information system that exhaustively garners information about students and uses that information to identify students at risk. The information it gathers includes
• Students’ entire previous academic history;
• Students’ learning management system activity logs (for example, how often students visit Blackboard and how long they stay on the site);
• Students’ academic misconduct record;
• Students’ attendance for each class;
• Students’ marks for each assessment;
• Students’ campus activity logs (how often they visit campus and how long they stay on campus);
• Students’ English level;
All the information is funneled through a sophisticated intelligent algorithm that associates each student with a risk level and categorise all students into three classes: low-risk, medium-risk and high risk. The collation of information pertaining to students’ all sorts of academic activities provides much greater insights of each student’s risk level which would otherwise not be possible with isolated information. Lecturers and other staff in academic management have access to each student’s label. ABCU claims that such an information system helps lecturers and academic management to better target students that are in need.
However, some students ABCU expressed concerns about this system, which has caused some discomfort among students. They feel that they are being subject to surveillance by the university and the university knows too much about them.
Are you concerned about the usage of such an information system at ABCU? Are there any ethical, legal and social concerns over the usage of such an information system? Would you introduce an information system policy to prevent the development and implementation of such information systems altogether?
Assessment Task
Part A requires you to pitch a policy that resolves a controversial issue. You may or may not use the fictitious scenario given in the background about ABCU. You have complete discretion to choose any areas of policy subject to two conditions:
(1) The policy must be pertaining to an aspect of information systems. For example, it can be related to information system security, general operations of information system, or even the vendor selection for the development of an information system.
(2) It must be somewhat controversial, that is, the policy can be argued either way and can be viewed as a debate point. For example, you should not pitch a policy for not hacking others’ password without any authorisation.
You should note that you are required to pitch a policy, not a procedure, that is, you need to pitch a principle rather than the implementation of that principle.
You are required to deliver and video record an oral short pre-prepared speech to pitch a policy. The purpose of both forms of policy pitch is to inform, persuade and ask the decision maker to buy in your proposal, therefore the language used (both oral and written) must be persuasive and analytical.
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You pitch would follow the following recommended structure:
1. What is the issue, what is the need? i.e. what issue your policy is seeking to resolve. 2. Why is it important? What is the goal? What is the value or benefit of your policy? 3. Carry out a PEST analysis for the policy, that is, consider relevant political factors, economic
factors, sociocultural factors and technological factors that support your policy. 4. Who benefits from your policy idea?
5. What are the major barriers to carrying out your policy ideas? How will you overcome them? General Assessment Requirement:
• Incomprehensible submissions. Assessments provide the opportunity for students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills to achieve the required standard. To do this, assessment responses need to be both clear and easy to understand. If not, the University cannot determine that students have demonstrated their knowledge and skills. Assessments will, therefore, be marked accordingly including the potential for 0 (zero) marks where relevant.
• Track changes. If you use Track Changes when writing your assessment, you must ensure that the submitted document is the final and correct version of the document. That is, if your submitted report contains Track Changes or Comments or any other editing marks it may be awarded 0 (zero) marks. It is your responsibility to submit the final and correct version of your report.
• Check with marking criteria. Before submitting your assessment, you should check it against the assessment criteria and the marking rubric included in this specification to ensure that you have satisfactorily addressed all the criteria that will be used to mark your submission.
• Academic language. All submissions should be thoroughly proof-read for spelling, typographical or grammatical errors before being submitted. Do not reply on the ‘spell-check’ function in your word processing program. If, for example, ‘affect’ is substituted for ‘effect’, your program may not detect the error.
• Quality of recording. The recording of your policy pitch needs to be of professional quality with respect to sound clarity and video resolution. Tips of filming a video presentation can be found under the Assessment link in the main navigation menu in MGT609: Managing Information Systems.
• Referencing. It is essential that you use appropriate APA style for citing and referencing research. Please see more information on referencing here
http://library.laureate.net.au/research_skills/referencing
Submission Instructions
• Means of submission for Part A. Submit ONE video file (.mp4) via the Assessment link in the main navigation menu in MGT609: Managing Information Systems.
• No Zipped files. Students must NOT zip the MS Word document and the video file or submit it as one single zip/compressed file.
• Complete and correct submission. Assessment, once submitted, are FINAL and therefore cannot be modified. You bear all the onus to ensure that your submissions are final, correct (correct files in correct format) and complete before submitting to Blackboard.
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The Learning Facilitator will provide feedback via the Grade Centre in the LMS portal. Feedback can be viewed in My Grades.
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Learning Rubric: Assessment 3A Policy Pitch
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