Information Systems for Business Performance MSc

Course details

This is a conversion course with an excellent employment record. It provides you with a coherent set of skills which are essential in building, managing and leveraging effective and efficient information systems (IS) for organisations. MSc ISBP graduates will acquire the skills necessary to manage and leverage IS for problem-solving, value-generation and cost savings.

This is a 12-month intensive course with industrially mentored collaborative projects. Students are taught from beginner level, and prepared to take up business analyst/programmer and management positions in IT departments in small, medium or large organisations, whether public or private, in the financial services, manufacturing or any sector.

Course Details

Part 1 takes place over the eight months of the academic year from the end of September to the end of May.

It consists of the following taught modules:

• Electronic Business Models and Systems
• IT Organisation
• In-sourcing and Outsourcing
• Enterprise Business Intelligence
• Business Continuity and IT Value
• Application Modelling and Design
• Data Modelling and Database Systems
• Storage Technology
• Current Issues in IT

Part 2 takes place over the four months following Part 1 from the beginning of June to the end of September and consists of a collaborative industry research project. This will give you a practical experience of a research project in a business context. This collaborative project will allow groups of students to specialise on a chosen industry sectors (e.g. financial services, technological, pharmaceuticals, government, retail/distribution) in the context of a research project carried out under the supervision of an industry expert and an academic specialist. Groups will develop a proposal and carry out fieldwork in order to produce a report on their selected topic.

Detailed Entry Requirements

To be eligible for the MSc in Information Systems for Business Performance candidates must hold at least 2.2 honours primary degree or equivalent, except graduates holding a degree in business information systems or equivalent.

Candidates who do not meet or achieve the 2.2 honours degree standard may be admitted to the programme on the basis of extensive practical or professional experience as deemed appropriate by the Professor of Business Information Systems and the Faculty of Commerce.

Assessment

The assessment methods vary in order to facilitate group and inpidual applied learning. Report writing, presentations, development projects and in-class exams are examples of the types of assessments used.