Syllabus for 2nd Term Exam

Prepare for Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 of your text as well as the IS Audit in line with the guest speaker lecture. 

You can download the guest speaker presentation on IT Risk Management from: http://www.4shared.com/file/95414239/646b7501/IT_Risk_Management_032009.html

In addition wikipedia has a very usefull article on IS Audits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology_audit 

Don't forget to take a look at different certifications in the field provided at the end of the article like CISA, CIA, CAP, CISM....

GUEST SPEAKER SESSION - 1030 to 1145 Saturday 21st March 2009

I have grabed an opportunity as Mr. Sajid Khan is in the city to be our guest speaker for tomorrow's class. He will be delivering his talk/presentation on IT Risk Management. Besides holding Ph.D. he is bringing to our class some 18 years of global prfessional experience with fourteen years in IT Assurance and Risk Management and 4 years in IT Systems and Development.

Both classes will meet in room 8 and 9 at 1030AM for the session. There will be attendance at the start and anyone leaving during the session without geting his name registered with me will be marked absent. 

Discussion on first term papers deffered till Saturday

I would not be holding any feedback session/ discussion on the first terms scripts tommorow, instead now they will be held on comming saturday.

WEBLOGS: Assignment One - 5 Marks

I would be writing this assignment in 3 parts and subsequent assignments will be linked to it.

In first part you are required to create you own weblog with any free blog provider. The core purpose of the blog will be to discuss your studies and intellectual makeup with the outerworld. The issues that touch you most, it may be politics, arts, literature, science, technolology, sports or any other thing that is of interest to you, that whcih drive you, that which keep you going, that which define you, that whcih gives you sense of purpose in life. In doing so you would also like to showcase your university skills, works that you had done before or doing it here in my course or in some other course. Of course I am also asking to put up a page about yourself. If appropriate, a nice formal pic etc..

Spend some time giving your blog a catchy but meaningful title.

You can take further help  from the wikibook on An Introduction to Weblogs (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/An_Introduction_to_Weblogs) for making a blog. Section 2 directly explains the steps required to quickly make a blog using the blogger service.

You can also find insight into the blogging at: http://weblogs.about.com/od/?once=true&

Now include the RSS Feed gadget in you blog. In Blogger this gadget can be added by going to Customize-Layout-Page Elements.

Pick up a nice new template.  Select appropriate fonts and colors.

Now goto Settings and set all approprate settings. Add some description to your blog. Change all to a meaningful advantage.

Enable backlinks. See what they are? and experiment with them.

Dont forget to upload your homeworks that you have done so far. Summaries that you have taken of the lectures, presentations (if any) , or any other related work.

Add an article on your hobbies, include some pics to show your collections etc...

Include a section to give a list of the books that you have found interesting... on any subject of your interest... but should not be textbooks...

Include a section of places that you have visited... some pics or history of those places....

Include a post on the wish list ....

and about the childhood dreams ... you may want to hear Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture before that...

Include any other material that is of your interest.

I will be updating this post in few hours for the third part of the assignment.

First Term Vital Statistics

Overall average (i.e. of both sections put to gether) is 79.6 percent whereas section one performed better with 82.8 percent and section three averaged 76.5 percent.

Shoaib Ahmed Zaki of section three is the highest scorer in both sections with 93.6 percent score where as Anam Manzar is highest in section one by scoring 93.2 percent.

Here are the percentile results:

Percentile              Score

83                                 13.4

70                                 13.0

60                                12.51

54                                12.42

50                                12.26

31                                 11.51

Each one of you can look at his/her own score wihtout anyaccounting for any makeup to find out his/her percentile rank. Lets say if you have scored 12.6, your fall in under 60th percentile because it is more than 12.51 but less than 13 to qualifiy for 70th percentile. It would be interpreted as atleast there were 60 percent test takers (i.e. both sections inculded) who score less than you! or alternately you may interpret it as: you are among the top 40 percent of the those who took this test. It can be a great tool  to help you understand your ranking in the course.

Now few other interpretations that comes handy when we look at this percentile data. Section one's averge is 12.42 which is equivalent to 54th percentile meaning 54 percent of the entire test takers scored less than this average. Section three on the other hand has an average of 11.48 close to 31st percentile meaning only 31 percent scored belower than this!.

So it means section 3 has performed slower than the section one. This may be due to the fact that  four people could only attain grade F! 

Anybody who has scored less than 10.65 occupies bottom 20 percent of the pool! and anybody scoring less than 10 is in the last 10 percent of the test takers.

67 percent of section one has scored more than 80 percent whereas 43 percent of section three has scored more than 80 percent.

Finally read your scores with 4 percent makeup points! This will help us reduce the 'fat tail' of section three and for section one it will be time for bonus.

Preparation for Class on Wednessday, 4th March 2009.

1. Quiz from Chapter 5.
2. 5.6: Hands on IT
Solve fist two probems...
3. Print, read, and file in your folder.
Two LearningTrackModules of chapter 5