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Information
for Katz students interested in taking courses in Graduate
Information Science & Technology Program
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Some Katz students have found courses in
Information Science and Technology help to expand
the range of technical courses normally available
at Katz. In addition, it is sometimes the case
that a course in SIS may be offered during a
term when its parallel course at Katz is not
offered. Katz students should keep two constraints
in mind:
- Due to the need to fulfill
certain general and specific MBA prerequisites,
students are generally
not encouraged to take courses outside
the school until the second year.
- A number
of SIS courses have heavy programming
requirements and assume a high level
of programming skill.
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| General Prerequisites |
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| Graduate courses at SIS assume the student has
basic skills in Math, Statistics, Programming and
Psychology. In general, as a Katz graduate student
you have the needed Math and Statistics background.
(If you have not taken statistics course at the
undergraduate level, see the note below.) Unless
you are taking courses in the cognitive science
area (numbered 2300-2499) you will generally not
have to be concerned with the cognitive science/psychology
prerequisites.
This leaves the programming prerequisite. The
program requires proficiency in a computer programming
language -- typically C. In addition, most students
who are not computer science undergraduates take
TELCOM
2300 Software Tools and Techniques and
INFSCI
2500 Data Structures before attempting
the more technical systems courses in the Department.
You should be aware that many courses in the
systems and technology offerings of the program
assume that you are comfortable programming in
multiple languages on different platforms, and
that you can easily teach yourself languages
or language features you do not know. |
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| Specific Course Prerequisites |
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Although the previous background is assumed for
all SIS graduate students, not all courses
demand all these skills. While some courses are
coding intensive others require little or no coding
and rely more on calculation and stochastic techniques
where math and probability become more important.
Beyond the general prerequisites, courses may have
additional course sequence prerequisites other
than the general ones mentioned here; therefore,
it is very important to check, prior to registration,
the general and specific prerequisites for each
course with the course web page and/or instructor.
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| Developing the needed skills |
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| Katz students will develop proficiency in programming
by taking the first-year MoIS Courses:
BMIS 2548 - Process-Oriented Business Programming
BMIS 2566 - Data Structures
For coding-intensive courses such as client
server, software engineering, interactive graphics,
and document processing, Katz students without
a strong programming background should be prepared
to catch up on their own to reach reasonable
levels of expertise. The following courses can
help:
TELCOM
2300 (Software Tools and Techniques) provides a review of C and an introduction to
the Unix operating system and algorithm coding.
Students who are not familiar with the Unix operating
system, should take this course. Students who
have had a course in C or Pascal, but who have
not programmed much will also benefit from this
course.
Katz students who want to take telecommunications
courses and who have not had a college-level
statistics course should take the Katz statistics
course before taking the telecommunications courses.
BQOM 2401 - Statistical Analysis: Uncertainty,
Prediction and Quality Improvements
Students who have an interest in Expert Systems
and/or Human-Computer Interaction will benefit
from having a basic cognitive psychology course.
If you do not have a psychology degree or several
psychology courses you should make plans to take
the cognitive psychology course:
INFSCI 2300 - Human Information Processing
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| Matching Katz and SIS Specific Prerequisites |
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| There is not a one-to-one equivalence between
Katz and SIS courses or prerequisites. At the
same time, there are pairs of courses with similar
content. In general, SIS courses review each technology,
its concepts and technical implications; Katz courses
review each technology and its business implications.
Most of the SIS assignments are quantitative while
the Katz assignments are more managerial and case-based.
With this in mind, you may consider the following
as equivalent. Generally, you should not retake
the SIS equivalent of a Katz course. However,
if you found the Katz course technically difficult,
it might be the case that taking the SIS course
would help you better prepare.
There are several courses that serve as specific
course prerequisites. These courses and the Katz
equivalents are:
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| A Final Comment about Prerequisites |
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| This page is intended to assist Katz students
in identifying potential areas of specialization
and how to fulfill the proper pre-requisites to
take courses of interest at SIS. It is important
that you understand that technology courses, especially
at this point in time, have a dynamic contents
and rapidly changing emphasis. The information
provided here should be taken only as a preliminary
reference. The final determinant of the content
and of your readiness to take a course is the instructor,
either directly based on email or face to face
communication or indirectly through the syllabus
for the course. Most SIS courses have
syllabi for the coming term online attached to
the instructor's website. You can access them through
the links provided on http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~dist/academics/MSIS_course_description.htm.
The Katz MoIS Program Director can also assist
you in evaluating the feasibility of taking a specific
course based on your background and interests. |
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| Registration Procedure |
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| You will register for SIS courses as you do
normally for all your other courses. As with all
course scheduling decisions, the final approval
of your course of study must be approved by the
MoIS Director. Generally, SIS courses can be used
in the areas of specialization shown below or where
there is a close equivalency between Katz and SIS
courses. |
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| Areas of Specialization |
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The following chart shows a potential areas
of specialization and a suggested course sequence;
BMIS, BQOM and BAIM codes refer to courses from
the areas of Information Systems, Operations
Management and Artificial Intelligence at Katz;
while courses with INFSCI and TELE as a prefix
refer to courses from the School of Information
Sciences.
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| webmaster
For information about Admissions & Financial Aid, please
contact
Shabana Reza at 800.672.9435
Information Science & Technology Email: isinq@sis.pitt.edu
Telecommunications Email: teleinq@sis.pitt.edu
Library & Information Science Email: lisinq@sis.pitt.edu
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