Dealing with Management Information System

When the term Management comes in any of the subject name it seems to be horrible in many senses from students’ point of view. The subject MIS i.e. Management Information System also falls in such categories. I came across the MIS first time when I was studying in engineering third year. I did not study this subject in engineering but I heard about this from my colleagues of Information Technology branch. We were knowing very little about this branch that time. They were having several theory and management oriented subject that time. MIS was also one of that. We were studying many complex subjects and in the same semester IT students were dealing with several simple subjects. I had heard that IT is having a simple theory subject named ‘Management Information System’. But, as this subject name was containing the term ‘Management’, I ignored the contents of this. We were only knowing that this is the core IT subject.

I joined as lecturer in IT branch after completion of my graduation. When the semester pattern was introduced to diploma in engineering, IT was introduced with MIS. I got chance to teach this subject first time in 2010, to the management branch. This was the first time; I came to know about MIS deeply. The syllabus of MBA was almost 40 percent different than that of engineering. The management students were having study of several software, hardware, network and communication technologies in the syllabus. As it was the need of this syllabus design. But, the actual focus of the syllabus was towards management activities in the IT Company. I used to study the subject and concepts in deep. Several concepts I found somewhat difficult to teach to management students. Because the terminologies that were required to use, were not familiar to the students. It was required to teach them again in simple manner. This has given me a good experience to differentiate the teaching between to management and to engineering students. It was a good lesson to me also. But, by this way I have been introduced to this subject in very well manner. I got the actual idea about the management concepts and its implementation in information technology industries.

Next year, I got chance to teach the same subject to IT engineering branch in third year. I did not intend to keep this as a special subject for me as I was already having microprocessor and microcontroller with me. I wanted to experience to teaching of management subject again. I wanted to improve my English speaking skills. I wanted to know more about the information technology branch and its internal management concepts. While teaching the MIS to engineering students, I found the difference between the management oriented MIS and engineering oriented MIS. The syllabus and contents of the subject I found more IT oriented. I got the reason of keeping this subject in the syllabus of university of Pune. Previous year, I used the book of James O’Brien to study. It was a nice book. Apart from it, I got the book of Waman Jawadekar from Tata McGraw Hill. Its language was very simple to understand. I used to refer several other books also. But, in comparison with Jawadekar’s book, these were not that much simple. So, for throughout teaching, I used to refer it.

While teaching the MIS, I came to know about various management terminologies used not only in IT but several other industries too. Actually, these were not the part of management syllabus. In my whole engineering, I studied only ‘Industrial Management’ as the management subject. This was total manufacturing industry oriented. But, while teaching I used to learn several novel concepts of engineering management. It is my habit to learn every concept in deep; I studied the MIS concepts also in the same fashion. I got a better idea to understand the management. One most important thing I analyzed is that, very few researches are done in several areas of Management Information System. So, there is more scope to research in this. Especially, e-commerce and its technologies, e-governance, SCM, Cyber laws etc. It was a very nice experience to search, research, learn, study and teach such concepts to students.

I have prepared the PowerPoint presentations to teach this subject. These PPTs are available at this link.

I know, every subject in engineering is interesting. Only we need to change the angle of looking at it.