Business IT / Business IT

The Academic Board of Business Administration, Odense
Teaching activity id: 9331001.
Teaching language: English.ECTS / weighting: 5 ECTS / 0.083 full-time equivalent.
Examination language: English.
Exam activity id: 9331012, 9331002.Approved: 29-09-17.
Period: Spring 2018.
Grading: Internal grading.
Assessment: 7-point scale.
Offered in: Odense.

Subject director:
Professor Ole Bent Olesen, Department of Business and Economics.

Prerequisites:
Knowledge about and skills in mathematics as acquired in Tools for Quantitative Analysis is recommended.


Purpose:
The purpose of the course is to provide the student with
i) knowledge on how to design and implement a small and simple information system using VBA in Excel
ii) knowledge on how to extract data from an information system (a database) and use the data using VBA in Excel to analyze business economic problems
iii) basic knowledge on how a database is designed

Solving problems within business economics often require non-standard IT solutions, e.g. extracting business data and analyze such data using e.g. Excel. Hence, an additional purpose of the course is to provide the students with basic knowledge about how to structure data, extract data, and how to use VBA in Excel to mimic the exchange of information in an ERP system.

Content - Key areas:
  • An introduction to the programming language VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) in Excel
  • This introduction includes declaration of variables, the use of logic constraints and loops, and debugging
  • This introduction includes how to setup a simple user interface through Excel and how to do data import and data export along with exception handling.
  • The student will learn how to structure a computer program using modules and subroutines
  • An introduction to the basic principles behind the design of a database, including concepts like relations, keys, and normalization.
  • An introduction to data extraction from databases using SQL data handling 

Goals description (SOLO taxonomy):
The goal of the course is to enable the student to apply the tools of the course to describe, analyze, and solve problems within business economics.

In particular the student has to be able to:
  • Demonstrate a basic understanding of how data can be structured within a database to facilitate extraction of important data entities for business economic analyses. It is required that the student demonstrate this understanding by implementing solutions to business economic problems in VBA in Excel and presenting the solutions in a management context
  • Demonstrate a basic understanding of ERP systems, information flows in ERP systems and their use for decision making in a business economics.
  • Demonstrate a basic understanding of VBA programming within Excel by solving problems within business economics.
  • Demonstrate basic SQL understanding by creating basic SQL expressions to extract data from a database
  • It is required that the student demonstrate this basic understanding by implementing solutions to business economic problems using VBA in Excel in combination with data extraction from databases using SQL.
  • Apply VBA in Excel to construct programs/applications that can be used to solving specific problems within business economics.




Literature:
Literature will be announced in the beginning of the semester.

Time of classes:
Spring.

Scheduled classes:
2 hours of lectures every other week starting from the second week of the semester (in total 14 hours) and 2 hours of exercises every week starting the first week of the semester (in total 28 hours).

Supervision regarding the take-home assignment is limited to 30 minutes per group member. In other words, supervision of a group of four students cannot exceed two hours.

Form of instruction:
The lectures combine blended learning and physical lectures. The fundamental knowledge is given through a series of blended learning video lectures available on BlackBoard. The lectures focus on the application of the material following the exercises. The lectures include exercises where the students will develop skills in describing data structures and programming through work with small examples on business economic problems and implement solution methods in VBA in Excel. Finally, a compulsory assignment will allow the students to develop skills in fairly complex programming by application of VBA in Excel on a larger problem within business economics. The compulsory assignment is given during the semester.

These learning activities result in an estimated distribution of the work effort of an average student as follows:

Lectures and exercises: 42 hours.
Preparation: 35 hours.
Compulsory assignments: 8 hours.
Exam and supervision: 50 hours.
In total: 135 hours.

Time of examination:
Ordinary exam in June.
Reexamination in August.

Registration for the course is automatically a registration for the ordinary examination in the course. Cancellation is not possible. If the student does not participate in the examination, the student will use one examination attempt.

The form for the re-exam is subject to change. This will be announced 14 days before the reexam takes place.

Examination conditions:
A compulsory assignment (course id. 9331012) must be passed. A schedule will be available at the start of the semester. The assignment may be done in groups of up to four students and is internally evaluated with passed/not passed.

If the examination requirement is not met, the student cannot participate in the exam and one attempt has been used.
Fulfillment of the exam requirement is only possible prior to the ordinary exam. Participation in the re-exam thus requires that the exam requirements to be met prior to the ordinary exam.

Deviations may be granted by the teacher regarding deadlines provided there is a reasonable cause.

Duration: 7 days (may include a weekend). Date for submission will be available on the examination plan.
Location: Home assignment.
Internet Access: Necessary.
Hand out: Course page in Blackboard.
Hand in: Via SDU-assignment in the course page in Blackboard.
Extent: No more than 15 pages (exclusive the part of the assignment that deals with Source code)
Exam Aids: All exams aids allowed.

Form of examination for the certificate:
Written report with oral examination.

Supplemental information for the form of examination:
Duration: Circa two months. The exam assignment is handed out primo April and must be handed in at the ultimo of May at the latest. The exact dates will be available on the examination plan.
Location: Home assignment.
Internet Access: Necessary.
Hand out: Course page in Blackboard
Hand in: Via SDU-assignment in the course page in Blackboard.
Extent: No more than 25 pages (exclusive the part of the assignment that deals with Source code)
Exam Aids: All aids allowed.

The take-home assignment can be written by in groups of up to four students. After the assignment is handed in the examinator will conduct an individual 10-minute oral exam that will be based on the assignment. During the take-home assignment, the groups may have up to 30 minutes of supervision per group member for a total of a maximum of two hours per group.

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