Reference No: KLL-FO-ACAD-000 | Effectivity Date: August 3, 2020 | Revisions No.

: 00

VISION MISSION
A center of human development committed to the pursuit of wisdom, truth, Establish and maintain an academic environment promoting the pursuit of
justice, pride, dignity, and local/global competitiveness via a quality but excellence and the total development of its students as human beings,
affordable education for all qualified clients. with fear of God and love of country and fellowmen.

GOALS
Kolehiyo ng Lungsod ng Lipa aims to:
1. foster the spiritual, intellectual, social, moral, and creative life of its client via affordable but quality tertiary education;
2. provide the clients with reach and substantial, relevant, wide range of academic disciplines, expose them to varied curricular and co-curricular
experiences which nurture and enhance their personal dedications and commitments to social, moral, cultural, and economic transformations.
3. work with the government and the community and the pursuit of achieving national developmental goals; and
4. develop deserving and qualified clients with different skills of life existence and prepare them for local and global competitiveness

MODULE
FIRST Semester, AY 2021-2022

I. COURSE CODE/ TITLE: GEE 102 – IT IN THE MODERN WORLD

II. SUBJECT MATTER

TOPICS Time-Frame

VI. Interpreting and Understanding Information

VII. Data Warehousing

VIII. An Overview of Ethics Nov 2021 – Jan 2022

IX. Privacy, Freedom of Expression and Intellectual Property

X. The Impact of Information Technology on Productivity and Quality

of Life

III. ENGAGEMENT

VI. Interpreting and Understanding Information

Instruction: Read and understand the discussion about:

1. The Nature of Information
2. The Characteristics of Information
3. Decision Making Process

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 Learning Outcomes
After studying this chapter, the student should be able to:
1. Describe and differentiate data versus information
2. Identify the different characteristics of information and its uses
3. Engage in problem solving and decision-making process using information
4. Describe how organizations are classified and the decision-making conducted

ENGAGEMENT

Introduction

Even people who have been using computers for a few years still marvel at what they can do - how at
lightning speed and with amazing accuracy they can sort a mailing list, balance a ledger, typeset a book, or
create lifelike models of objects that have never existed. Just how a computer does all this may seem
magical, but in fact it is a process based on simple concepts. All the words, numbers and images you put
into and get out of the computer are manipulated in relatively simple ways by the computers’ processing
components.
So, how data differs from information, and what form it takes inside the computer?

6.1. The Nature of Information

Many of the contributions of IT involve people and their use of information. Individuals seek
information for many reasons, for example, to make decisions, evaluate a proposal, answer questions from
a customer, and so on. Too many information systems have failed, not because of their underlying
technology, but because they did not contribute much to solving user problems. These systems may have
provided inappropriate or inaccurate information, addressed the wrong problem, or suffered from other flaws
that came about because designers did not understand how managers make decisions and use information.

What is Information?
"Information is data that has been processed into a form that is meaningful to the recipient and is of
real perceived value in current or prospective decisions" (Davis and Olson, 1985, p. 6). This definition of
information systems stresses · that data must be processed in some way to produce information; information
is more than raw data. To be more precise, data is raw facts and figures and information is processed data,
that is useful and meaningful. Data is the input to processing, and information is the output.

6.2 The Characteristics of Information

Information can be characterized in a number of ways; some kinds of information are more suitable
for decision making than others.
✓ Historical Information: The time frame for information can be historical or predictive.

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 ✓ Surprise Information: It alerts us to the existence of a problem; it is also important in developing and
evaluating different alternatives

✓ Summary Information: Information may be presented in summary form or in detail and vary in
accuracy. It is often sufficient for problem finding, but summary and detailed information may be
needed for other uses. Information can be frequently updated, relatively old, loosely organized, or
highly structured.

6.3 Decision Making Process

Knowledge is a strategic resource for many organizations. We can define knowledge as "information
plus know-how" (Kogut and Zander, 1992). Information alone is not enough to produce knowledge; we must
also understand the best way to use information to solve a problem, contribute to a product or service, or
make a similar contribution to the organization. Knowledge builds over time in the heads of employees in
the form of past decisions, processes in the organization, characteristics of products, interests of customers,
and similar experiences.
One important job for a manager is to foster the development of organizational knowledge and to
create an organization that learns as it operates. Through these, we have suggested that one important role
of information systems is to support decision making. How do people make decisions?

6.3.1 Problem Finding and Solving

We must be aware of a problem before we can make a decision. A problem exists when the decision
maker's ideal situation differs from reality, for example, when sales are below expectations. This example
corresponds to something we call disturbance handling; the manager discovers a discrepancy between the
ideal model and reality, and attempts to find some way to eliminate the discrepancy.
After noting the existence of a problem, the decision maker must decide what caused it. Are
inventories up? Is the advertising budget too low? After determining the cause or causes, the decision maker
tries to solve the problem by developing some program to remedy the situation. There is also another type
of problem finding activity undertaken by the manager who is looking for improvement projects. In this sense,
the problem can be defined by asking, "What else could we be doing at the present time?" The manager is
trying to anticipate problems and plan for them.
The tremendous amount of information available in corporate databanks or data warehouses
combined with the vast information resources of the World Wide Web on the Internet make problem finding
an extremely important managerial activity. You must learn how to discover that a problem exists and then
use the variety of resources available through computers and networks to locate data. You will use the data
to both understand the problem and develop a solution for it.

6.3.2 Types of Decision

Not all decisions are alike; some involve different levels of the organization and some are more
important than others. Anthony (1965) suggests that there are three broad categories of decisions made in
organizations, a model still widely used today.

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 ✓ Strategic Planning. In strategic planning the decision maker develops objectives and allocates
resources to obtain them. Decisions in this category are characterized by long time periods and
usually involve a substantial investment and effort. The development and introduction of a new
product is an example of a strategic decision.

✓ Managerial Control. Decisions involving managerial control concern the use of resources in the
organization and often include personnel or financial problems. For example, an accountant may try
to determine the reason for a difference between actual and budgeted costs.

✓ Operational Control. An operational control decision covers the day-to-day problems that affect the
operation of the firm: What should be produced today in the factory? What items should be ordered
for inventory? Who makes the preponderance of each of the three types of decisions?

6.3.3 Stages in Decision Making

In finding and solving a problem, the decision maker faces myriad decision cycles. What is the
problem, what is its cause, what additional data are needed, and how should the solution be implemented?
Each of these major steps in solving a problem involves the solution of subproblems.

The Nobel laureate, Herbert Simon (1965), suggests a series of descriptive stages for decision
making to help understand the decision process. The first stage is defined as intelligence, which determines
that a problem exists. The decision maker must become aware of a problem and gather data about it. We
have described this stage as problem finding or identification.

During the design stage, the problem solver tries to develop a set of alternative solutions. The problem
solver asks what approaches are available to solve the problem and evaluates each one. In the choice
stage, the decision maker selects one of the solutions. If all the alternatives are evaluated well, the choice
stage is usually the simplest one to execute. We should also add a stage to Simon's model called
implementation in which we ensure that the solution is carried out.

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 A more elaborate model of the decision-
making process is found in the figure shown
(Slade, 1992).

Making a decision can be a complex

undertaking; however, decisions are what
determine the direction of our lives and our
organizations.

Information systems, among other roles,

help provide information for decision making.

6.3.4 The Influence of the Organization

In most organizations, groups of individuals are involved in making decisions. How does this group
finally reach a consensus and make a decision that commits the entire firm? We all have observed different
organizations in action and wondered how decisions are made.
There are a number of ways to classify organizations:

➢ Bureaucracy. Most universities, government agencies, and many large organizations fall into this
category. Bureaucracies are characterized by a large number of management layers. There are
many rules and procedures to protect individuals; if you follow the procedures, how can you be
wrong? Bureaucracies try to survive and to minimize uncertainty; members of these organizations
stress job security. We would expect decisions in bureaucracies to be conservative and require
modest changes to existing procedures.

➢ The charismatic organization is dominated by a strong leader. This individual sets the goals of the
firm and tends to make all decisions. His or her decisions are hard to predict because this kind of
leader often does not reveal plans to the rest of the organization. It is safe to say that the leader is
likely to make the decision that subordinates then execute.

➢ The adaptive organization tries to respond quickly to its environment. The organization stresses
rapid response times and does not have a large number of layers of management. A small group
of decision makers analyze data and come to decisions quickly.

Although there are many other types of organizations, our main point is that individuals usually make
decisions in the context of some organization. It is clear that most decisions are not entirely rational as
advocated by an economist. People are not always able to examine all alternatives and choose a course

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that maximizes the value of some outcome. The nature of the organization will influence the decision and
the kind of information that people making the decision require.

ACTIVITY NO. 06

Self-test: Answer the following questions. Expound your answer to support your arguments. (40 points)

1. Why is information more than just a data?

2. A variety of interpretations of data raise a major challenge for management in the organization. How
can different interpretations of information lead to conflict? How can this conflict be resolved?
3. How do people make decisions? What makes a decision credible?
4. How important that a group or an organization reaches a consensus in making a decision for the
firm?

OUTPUT
To be submitted in a word document with the following format: Paper Size-Letter, Font- Arial, Font
Size- 12, space-1.5, margin-1” all sides. Place your name on the upper left corner of the document with your
last name, first name, middle initial and indicate below the section you are in. To be submitted thru the LMS
system on or before the provided due date.

EVALUATION

Evaluation of results is based on the answers given and scores provided for each item. Criteria for activity

Criteria Description Points

The single controlling point made with an awareness of task about a
Focus specific topic 20
The presence of ideas developed through facts, examples, anecdotes,
Content details, opinions, statistics, reasons, and/or explanations 40
The order developed and sustained within and across paragraphs using
Organization transitional devices and including introduction and conclusion 20

The choice, use and arrangement of words and sentence structures that
Style create tone and voice 10

Conventions Grammar, mechanics, spelling, usage and sentence formation 10

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 VII. Data Warehousing

Instruction: Read and understand the discussion about:

1. Introduction to Data Warehousing
2. The Five Data Warehousing Mistakes
3. Data Warehousing: Problems and Complexities
4. Intelligent Warehousing for ERP System
5. Data Mining

Learning Outcomes
After studying this chapter, the student should be able to:
1. Describe how data warehousing works
2. Identify the data warehousing mistakes
3. Understand the possible problems encountered in data warehousing and its
complexities that affects business operations
4. Define how data mining works in connection with data warehousing principle

ENGAGEMENT

7.1 Introduction to Data Warehousing

Heralded as the solution to the management information dilemma, the term ‘data warehouse’ has
become one of the most used terms in the IT vocabulary.
The concept of ‘data warehousing’ dates back at least to the mid-1980s and possibly even earlier.
In essence, it intended to provide an architectural model for the flow of data from operational systems to
decision support environments. It attempted to address the various problems associated with this flow and
the high costs associated with it. In the absence of such architecture, there usually existed an enormous
amount of redundancy in the delivery of management information. In larger corporations it was typical for
multiple decision support projects to operate independently, each serving different users but often requiring
much of the same data. Legacy systems were frequently being revisited as new requirements emerged,
each requiring a subtly different view of the legacy data.
Based on analogies with real life warehouses, data warehouses were intended as large-scale
collection/storage/staging areas for legacy data, from where data could be distributed to retail stores or
data marts which were tailored for access by decision support users. While the data warehouse was
designed to manage the bulk supply of data from its suppliers and to handle the organizations and storage
of this data, the retail stores or data marts could be focused on packaging and presenting selections of the
data to end-users, often to meet specialized needs.
While the data warehousing concept in its various forms continues to attract interest, many data
warehousing projects are failing to deliver the benefits expected of them and are excessively expensive to
develop and maintain. The cost of data warehousing projects are usually high. This is explained primarily
by the requirement to locate, clean and integrate data from different sources-often legacy systems. Such

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exercise is inevitably labor-intensive and time-consuming, but is essential to the success of the project.
The cost of extracting cleaning and integrating data represents 60-80 percent of total cost of a data-
warehousing project

7.2 The Five Data Warehousing Mistakes

Whenever you may be in your data warehousing journey and whatever challenges you may be facing,
rest assured that scores of others have gone before you. And like true pioneers in most endeavors, the data
warehouse trailblazers made some egregious mistakes. But, you can learn from their errors.

According to data warehousing disciple, Alan Paller (Co-founder and Director of Training, Data
Warehousing Institute) the five mistakes to avoid are:

✓ Different Access Tools for Different Users

✓ Underestimation of User Demand
✓ Confusing and Inconsistent Data Definitions
✓ Most Effort Spent in Cleaning the Data
✓ Build an Underachieving Data Warehouse

7.3 Data Warehousing: Problems and Complexities

You are going to spend much time extracting, cleaning and loading data. The data warehousing
books, estimates that, in average, 80 percent of the time building a data warehouse will be spent on this
type of work. Despite best efforts at project management, data warehousing project scope will increase. To
paraphrase, traditional projects start with requirements and end with data. Data warehousing projects start
with data and end with requirements.

➢ Need for Validation

You will need to validate data not being validated by transaction processing systems. Typically, once
data are in warehouse many inconsistencies are found containing ‘descriptive’ information.

➢ Training for What?

Many warehouse end users will be trained and never or seldom apply their training. A study claimed
that only one quarter of the people who get training in a query tool actually become heavy users of
the tool.

➢ The Right Business Rule

Your warehouse users will develop conflicting business rules. Many warehouse tools allow users to
perform calculations. The tools will allow users to perform the same calculation differently. You will
find that there are means to incorporate some of the business rules in your warehouse. However,
the number of possible business rules is so large that you will not be able to incorporate all rules.

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 ➢ Space War
‘Overhead’ can eat up great amounts of disk space. A popular way to design a decision support
relational database is with star or snowflake schemes.

➢ Right to Access
‘Overhead’ can eat up great amounts of disk space. A popular way to design a decision support
relational database is with star or snowflake schemes. It is just a warning for you that if you deal with
security (and many organizations are, to great danger, avoiding it), you will have both a technical
and philosophical challenge. You are building a high maintenance system.

7.4 Intelligent Warehousing for ERP System

Thousands of companies around the world have made substantial investments in Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) systems and they now expect (not unreasonably) to earn returns on those
investments. However, while ERP systems have straitened day-today processes and satisfied a variety of
operational concerns, they have not and they themselves cannot deliver substantial and lasting competitive
advantages. Achieving such advantages requires a different category of software – information
delivery/decision support software – which can access ERP data and organize it for business – intelligence
purposes.

In many respects, ERP is clearly a major advance. Organizations are no longer committed to writing
hundreds of thousands of lines of Cobol or other third – generation software languages to perform standard
tasks such as order fulfillment and logistics. ERP vendors such as SAP, People Soft, Baan and JD Edwards
have developed predefined solutions, so organizations can invest in ready-made standard business
applications.

And once it has been adopted as “the corporate standard”, the whole company can adapt to it.
Everything is linked together, so that when the company issues on invoice, it does not just register in the
financial module, but also anywhere else that is relevant; materials management, logistics and so on.
Compared with the traditional way of running things, with high maintenance costs, application backlogs and
poor system documentation and integration, ERP had to be a better way of doing things. For many, ERP
holds the promise of an integrated enterprise, bringing improved operational efficiency, better productivity
and increased profitability.

7.5 Data Mining

Over the past three decades, computers have been used to capture details of business transactions
such as banking and credit card records, retail sales, manufacturing warranty and telecommunications etc.
The data from these transactional system have thumb prints of the key trends that impact various aspects
of each business – products that sell together, sources of profits, factors that affect manufacturing quality
etc. This data is gathered over time and stored in a separate database called a data warehouse.

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 While operational data deals with daily activities, the warehouse data is historical in nature and is
used to obtain perspective on the business trends. In time the insights gathered from the analysis of
historical data are used to improve business decisions.
Data mining is the automatic extraction of patterns of information from historical data, enabling
companies to focus on the next important aspects of their business – telling them what they did not know
and had not even thought of asking.

➢ Data Analysis Paradigm

In this, users operate on data to discover information. This paradigm relies on the analysis on
demand approach.

➢ Knowledge Access Paradigm

In this, the analysis is automatically done beforehand, refined patterns are pregenerated and users
just get knowledge when needed.

ACTIVITY NO. 07

Self-test: Answer the following questions. Expound your answer to support your arguments. (30 points)

1. Why do you think data warehousing was considered as a solution to the management information
dilemma? How does data warehousing works?
2. What are the main reasons behind a Data warehouse failure?

OUTPUT
To be submitted in a word document with the following format: Paper Size-Letter, Font- Arial,
Font Size- 12, space-1.5, margin-1” all sides. Place your name on the upper left corner of the document
with your last name, first name, middle initial and indicate below the section you are in. To be submitted
thru the LMS system on or before the provided due date.

EVALUATION

Evaluation of results is based on the answers given and scores provided for each item. Criteria for activity

Criteria Description Points

The single controlling point made with an awareness of task about a
Focus specific topic 20
The presence of ideas developed through facts, examples, anecdotes,
Content details, opinions, statistics, reasons, and/or explanations 40
The order developed and sustained within and across paragraphs using
Organization transitional devices and including introduction and conclusion 20

The choice, use and arrangement of words and sentence structures that
Style create tone and voice 10

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Conventions Grammar, mechanics, spelling, usage and sentence formation 10

REFERENCES: Information Technology for Management, 2009 by Henry Lucas Jr.

Fundamentals of Information Technology, Third Edition, 2006 by Deepak Bharihoke

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