MIS & CS -WORKING TOGETHER TO DEVELOP MOBILE APPS

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1 MIS & CS -WORKING TOGETHER TO DEVELOP MOBILE APPS Gita Williams Phelps Information Systems & Computer Science Georgia College & State University Milledgeville, GA ABSTRACT Management Information Systems (MIS) and Computer Science (CS) courses have been designed to provide the training the students need to make them marketable when they graduate. MIS students take core business courses to learn how businesses work and how to use information systems to improve organizations. In contrast, mathematics is very crucial for computer science theory. CS students are trained to take on challenging programming jobs and are concerned with problem solving and algorithm analysis. A growing area for software development is focused on mobile application development. This paper describes how MIS and CS students worked together to develop mobile apps for our university. INTRODUCTION Management Information Systems (MIS) and Computer Science (CS) are two majors available in the College of Business at our university. MIS students take core business courses, including marketing, management, accounting and finance. Understanding the organizational and behavioral aspects of information systems enable professionals to serve as a bridge between the technical and management levels within an organization. MIS professionals may often employ off-the-self products to solve organizational problems and improve the way an organization works. Computer Science students learn how to design and build software and create efficient solutions for real-world problems. Mathematics is very crucial for Computer Science theory. CS students are trained to take on challenging programming jobs and focus on developing problem solving and algorithm analysis skills. They must determine the best way to solve a problem in the most efficient manner possible. CS students often work in a laboratory and invent new software to be used in various fields including health, education, robotics and digital forensics. As more and more software development focuses on development for mobile devices, business are finding ways to integrate mobile devices into their organization. Mobile apps can be used to help people stay connected with customers and employees, stay informed, and stay productive. There are apps available to meet nearly every business need, from word processing to remote access, so employees can continue doing the job at hand. Mobile and web-based distributed technologies provide the infrastructure for many organizations. The CS curriculum should reflect today s reality and cover mobile and web-based

2 application development [2]. Business schools can foster innovation and provide an integration between the school and the community [3]. MIS & CS students at our university worked together to develop mobile apps for our university s career center and campus police department. This paper will highlight some of the courses MIS & CS students take that helped them to work together to develop mobile apps. PROJECTS GC Career is a mobile app developed for our university s Career Center. It provides Bobcat Tracks, a checklist of tasks students need to complete in order to stay on the right path to graduate (Figure 1a). There are tasks for all students from freshmen to seniors. This app is designed to keep students up-to-date and connected with the Career Center and even syncs career related events with user s Gmail calendar. GC Career is available in both Apple and Android app stores. In addition, an administration module was developed to allow an administrator to post updates to the checklist. a) b) Figure 1: a) GC Career includes a checklist of tasks, links to articles and calendar of events. b) GC SNAP is used to request a Student Night Auxiliary Patrol (SNAP) safety escort GC SNAP is a software suite developed for our university s campus police safety escort service. On nights and weekends, students can contact campus police to request a Student Night Auxiliary Patrol (SNAP) officer to escort them to locations on campus. GC SNAP was developed to enable seamless communication between students, the dispatcher and officers. Five modules were developed and work as one: The GC SNAP app (Figure 1b) is the module visible by student users; it was designed as a web app to allow students with various phones including Android, Blackberry and iphone to connect using their web browser.

3 The Dispatcher module (Figure 2) receives requests from student using the app and allows manual entry of requests that are phoned-in. The Officer module enables officers to process all SNAP requests from their vehicles. They are able to filter requests to show their active requests and shift history. The Administration module is needed to produce reports, add officers and locations to the system, and update emergency numbers stored in the student s app. The Map module is visible to the dispatcher and officers and shows the location on a map of all active requests. Figure 2: The Dispatcher module of the SNAP suite allows the police dispatcher to see status of all requests and officers. MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS Management Information Systems specialists help people when selecting products to fit their organization and managing deployment of the products. There were two MIS students working on this project. One student was responsible for graphic design and documentation, and the other student was responsible for setting up the initial development environment. In CBIS 3219 Web Development, topics include HTML, CSS and how to use Dreamweaver and Fireworks. During the initial phase of gathering the client s requirements, Dreamweaver was used to draw a rough draft of screen layouts. These layouts were modified and adjusted as the requirements were gathered. The final version was given to the CS developers and used as a starting point for the code. Developing mobile apps is image intensive. Icons, splash pages, marketing images, and graphics in the app need to be custom creations. iphone, ipad and Android devices have different image standards. In fact, there should be three versions of each graphic for android devices alone.

4 There were images needed for the home pages, users guides, and specification documentation. The MIS student s knowledge of Photoshop was invaluable. MIS courses provide experience needed to create professional user guides for training when the application was deployed. In addition to BCOM 2285 Business Communication & Reports required for the MIS major, our student also minored in Marketing and completed MKTG 3162 Consumer Behavior and MKTG 4166 Advertising & Promotion. These courses emphasized that well written content paired with impeccable presentation is very important and is a good way to set your project apart from others. An MIS student also takes CBIS 3212 Introduction to Programming & CBIS 4210 Advanced Programming. Even though the programming languages used for developing GC Career and GC SNAP are not covered in these classes, students learn about the process of development and how to test and try to break applications. Our development team was small so everyone was required to work together to test the code. The second MIS student on the team was our IT person. He used the knowledge gained in CBIS 4225 System Administration to create users on the department s web server and establish a test environment for the CS developers. When the applications were deployed, MIS and CS faculty worked with the clients. We walked the GC SNAP administrators through the process of establishing a secure Yahoo webhosted service. For the GC Career App, the requirements of the webserver and database were given to the university s technical support and they established the required campus accounts. COMPUTER SCIENCE Computer Scientists may develop all types of software from operating systems, communication programs to web browsers and search engines. There were three (3) CS undergraduate developers for these projects. The students were chosen for their skills in Android, IOS and Internet programming. Our school recognizes the growing need for mobile and web-based programming courses and offers electives to fit this need. Computer Science students often take an elective course, CSCI 4950 Internet Programming to learn how to develop web applications using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP as well as creating and accessing online databases. In this course, students are exposed to a variety of web authoring tools such as Dreamweaver and content management software such as Drupal. For the GC Career and GC SNAP software, websites were created using PHP and JSON for server-side programming and JavaScript and JQuery for client-side programming. In CSCI 4710 Databases, students master SQL and learn how to develop new database software. Some CS graduates use their knowledge of database software design to work as a database administrator for a company. For these projects, CS students were able to create and query the databases stored both online and in local storage on the smart phones. CSCI 4320 Software Engineering provides an overview of the software development life cycle. Students gain experience working on a programming team, meet with clients to gather

5 requirements and develop software for a client. The requirements often change during the design phase and implementation phase either due to the client requests or technical difficulty. GC Career grew from providing a checklist for graduation to incorporating facebook, twitter and WordPress blogs. Students learn ways to deal with change and stay organized. They learn their goal is to develop software that meets the client s needs, is fault-free, delivered on time, delivered within budget and is easy to modify. CS students take a variety of programming courses which enable them to easily learn new languages. All of the CS students completed an elective, CSCI 3950 iphone Application Development and learned how to develop native iphone apps using Objective-C. Their exposure to IOS programming was beneficial when configuring and uploading the app to the app store. However, for this project, an Android version was also needed. The CS student in charge of Android development was responsible for learning Android development on his own. CONCULSION The students were given 3 months to complete the projects. The software was developed on time; however, Apple took over a month to add the GC Career app to the Apple App store. The apps the students developed can be accessed by all of the students on campus. Within the first month of installing the software, over 1,700 requests were processed using the GC SNAP software suite. This paper lists just a few of the courses MIS and CS students took that helped them to work together to develop the mobile apps. Computer scientists may develop all types of software from system infrastructure to application technologies. Management Information Systems specialists help people when selecting products to fit their organization and managing deployment of the products. There are potentially rich opportunities for cooperation between MIS and CS majors. REFERENCES [1] Joint Task Force for Computing Curricula Computing Curricula 2005: The Overview Report Covering Undergraduate Degree Programs In Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, Information Technology And Software Engineering September ( March06Final.pdf ) [2] Mahmoud, Q. H., "Integrating Mobile Devices into the Computer Science Curriculum." Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE 2008), Saratoga Springs, NY, USA, pp. S3E-17- S3E-22. ( [3] AACSB International Task Force on Business Schools and Innovation Business Schools on an Innovation Mission ( business-schools-on-an-innovation-mission.pdf)