News: Students learn technology hands-on

Experiential learning is more than just a concept in W. P. Carey’s Department of Information Systems.

Experiential learning is more than just a concept in W. P. Carey’s Department of Information Systems. Students get hands-on technology experience starting in their first year, in CIS 105. Opportunities are also available for them to develop their business skills through participation in case competitions. In our photo, Manoj Panikkar and Shashank Rajani work at the whiteboard while Hao Li and Nghi Tran research a case.

Catching the coding bug

Principal Lecturer Matt McCarthy says the scene in his CIS 105 class this month looked like Woodstock: students scattered around the lecture hall, some of them sitting in rings around laptops like campers around a fire. This was the Microsoft App Symposium (MAS), a one-week coding experience for first year business students.

This is the seventh semester that McCarthy has included the symposium in the class, which is required for all business majors. That means more than 12,000 students have worked with “evangelists” from Microsoft since the project launched in spring 2013. CIS 105 is designed to give incoming students a taste of technology and basic knowledge they will need no matter what major they ultimately choose.

The symposium is completely hands on. Microsoft sends a team of what it calls evangelists, who work one on one with students as they code their apps and take them to market in the Microsoft Store. Some students have even made money from their apps. Early on, McCarthy reported, 20 percent of the apps in the Microsoft Store were created in his class.

"You know what ends up being the toughest problem during the MAS week?” McCarthy wrote in a recent piece on LinkedIn. “Getting students to leave. Seriously. Nothing engages and transfixes my students like coding … there are 400 or so more students in the hallway outside the lecture hall waiting to get in to start their Microsoft App Symposium experience.”

That experience can be helpful as students begin to search for internships and jobs, he adds. It’s something tangible, and frankly, impressive, that they can talk about in interviews.

CoMIS boot camp underway

A team of undergraduates are “training” hard for the 2016 Competition on Management Information Systems (CoMIS), a 24-hour contest March 30 through April 2 at the University of Minnesota. Team members include Manoj Panikkar (Computer Information Systems, Business Data Analytics, Accountancy), Nghi Tran, Hao Li and Shashank Rajani, who is the alternate. Clinical Assistant Professor Altaf Ahmad is coaching.

Ahmad said the team meets weekly to research, prepare and discuss strategy. “This year the team will do a dry run of the full competition of the deliberation period, which will simulate actual case competition conditions,” he said. “They will isolate themselves for 24 hours and develop recommendations as well as deliver their final presentation within those 24 hours. They will do this over spring break, so they are a committed bunch!”

The team is structured for continuity, so that every year there are experienced and younger students. Panikkar, a senior graduating in May, was on last year’s team, which finished third.

“We are focusing on customizing our preparation by presenting on case competitions that are similar to the ones given by CoMIS, as well as creating PowerPoint templates and cost structures we can potentially use for the competition,” Panikkar said.

Whether they win or not, team members take away valuable experience from CoMIS. It’s a chance to apply what they’ve learned in class while polishing their teamwork and presentation skills.