In colleges and unversities around the country it is common to find that needs for new courses in computing are recognized long before suitable courses are made available. This is especially true for colleges of business administration. The needs have long been obvious, but staffing such courses internally is a slow process. Some colleges of business are well served by computer science departments, but in other schools the catalyst for getting started is lacking. This paper addresses the problem by describing the development of a service course in computing offered by the Department of Computer Science for the College of Business Administration at the University of Nebraska. The approach taken to course development postulated that if a course is to appeal to a college of business administration, it must appeal to the special needs and aptitudes of the typical business student. This particular service course concentrated on special behavioral objectives: need to develop man-machine interface skills, attention to developing self-confidence and a sense of accomplishment, and understanding the information processing concepts needed in business today. The pedagogical approach to attainment of these objectives also was carefully fashioned for the given audience.
This communication describes the design criteria used in the early systems analysis activity of the cardiac laboratory. This analysis activity required an understanding of the cardiology laboratory environment, the establishment of needs to be answered by the program, and the goals of the entire system. The rationale for inclusion of various cardiologic, demographic, quality assurance, and personnel safety parameters is discussed. The input forms used, the database structure created, and the information provided by an applications system are described. Since the system is built around a general-purpose computer (the IBM PC or compatible) and widely available powerful general purpose software, the entire system may be used for many other cardiology laboratory data management tasks.
In colleges and unversities around the country it is common to find that needs for new courses in computing are recognized long before suitable courses are made available. This is especially true for colleges of business administration. The needs have long been obvious, but staffing such courses internally is a slow process. Some colleges of business are well served by computer science departments, but in other schools the catalyst for getting started is lacking. This paper addresses the problem by describing the development of a service course in computing offered by the Department of Computer Science for the College of Business Administration at the University of Nebraska. The approach taken to course development postulated that if a course is to appeal to a college of business administration, it must appeal to the special needs and aptitudes of the typical business student. This particular service course concentrated on special behavioral objectives: need to develop man-machine interface skills, attention to developing self-confidence and a sense of accomplishment, and understanding the information processing concepts needed in business today. The pedagogical approach to attainment of these objectives also was carefully fashioned for the given audience. As originally conceived, the cognitive objectives of the course aimed at teaching the analytically oriented business college under-graduate how to write programs in the FORTRAN language. In addition, the student was expected to be able to read application programs in the areas of marketing, accounting, finance, operations and personnel management. The course explained how these latter applications packages aid in the management decision process. Finally, the course required that the student become more familar with the general expository material in the area of electronic data processing.
The management of the University of Nebraska Computing Center (UNCC) is faced with primarily two tasks. The first task is making decisions in accordance with externally imposed conditions, such as physical resources and policies established by the University administration. The second task is making decisions according to UNCC internal policies and professional staff needs. With respect to the second task, it became apparent during planning sessions that management had available various sources of data concerning the staff on a global level, primarily the monthly reports generated by the accounting system, but only one source of data concerning the needs of individual staff members, this being the individual's supervisor. While it was possible for the supervisors to meet and try to synthesize various views into a global picture of staff requirements, such a picture is necessarily highly subjective. An additional source of data was required.
In the near future, the questionnaire for the 1980 census of the U.S. population will be locked up until it is time to administer the twentieth decenial census of the United States. At that time the Census Bureau will once more distribute and administer this document aimed at counting the over two hundred million inhabitants of the United States of America. In this bicentennial year it is reasonable to reflect on the origin of the census as well as some important technological advances that have accompanied the processing of this data. Perhaps from an historical view of the U.S. census, we may gain some insight into how this data may be used to shape our future and how we as computer professionals might participate in this shaping.
