I have now just finished my second year doing Business Studies and Information Management at The University of Sheffield, and I figure I'm now in a good position to tell you the positives and negatives about it - and believe me, there are quite a few negatives!!
Now I'm sure most of you ... Read review
Advantages: Interesting, new subject, small numbers doing course Disadvantages: Couldn't organise p*** up in a brewery
...year doing Business Studies and Information Management at The University of Sheffield, and I figure I'm now in a good position to tell you the positives and negatives about it - and believe me, there are quite a few negatives!!
Now I'm sure most of you know roughly what Business Studies entails - you get to do a bit of marketing, finance, economics, Human Resource Management (HRM) and a multitude of other vaguely interesting things ... ...the tale of Information Management. It involves missing websites, confused students, and some very odd lecturers!
What are the basics then?
Now if you are interested in doing Information Management (here after known as INF) at Sheffield there are a few things you should know. In year one life is pretty easy. However, this only applies IF you get an equal spread of subjects between semesters. I managed (with the ... more
I have now just finished my second year doing Business Studies and Information Management at The University of Sheffield, and I figure I'm now in a good position to tell you the positives and negatives about it - and believe me, there are quite a few negatives!!
Now I'm sure most of you know roughly what Business Studies entails - you get to do a bit of marketing, finance, economics, Human Resource Management (HRM) and a multitude of other vaguely interesting things - so for this op, I'm going to tell you the tale of Information Management. It involves missing websites, confused students, and some very odd lecturers!
What are the basics then?
Now if you are interested in doing Information Management (here after known as INF) at Sheffield there are a few things you should know. In year one life is pretty easy. However, this only applies IF you get an equal spread of subjects between semesters. I managed (with the business part of my degree being the main culprit) to do an 80-40 split - meaning I did 80 credits in the Autumn and 40 in the Spring. I realise that to the initiated that statement makes little or no sense, so I'll put it in easy to understand terms! I did about 26 hours a week in Autumn (that just lectures, tutorials and seminars) and about 8 in the Spring semester. Add to this the fact I wasn't living in Sheffield and so had to commute, and you should get some understanding of just how knackered I was! So first tip - get an equal 60-60 split of credits!
What's this Information Management thing?!
INF is a relatively new subject area for Universities to undertake and so few Uni's actually run the course - Sheffield was one of the first. It involves looking at a number of different issues such as:
Knowledge Management
How people learn
How companies collect and use information,
The difference between data, information and knowledge (you get this one drummed into you from the start!)
Multimedia issues - including website design
E-Commerce etc..
The newness of the course does pose many problems for students. My year seems to be the 'guinea pig' year - not tried a new module before - try it out on us! It's infuriating because it means courses aren't always very well thought out, they may not be very specific about what they ask of you, and trying to track down a past exam paper is like trying to get a Hamster out of a Rotastack - very difficult indeed! Even when you do find a past paper to work from, you invariably find that they've totally changed the format.
Problems!
To give you an example of the types of problems we have had I'll tell you the fascinating tale of one module - Multimedia Information Systems. This involves looking at the web, hypertext, graphics/movie compression, multimedia learning packages, problems with bandwidth etc… Now, up until the week before I was meant to start this module, it still said that they might not run the course due to 'staffing shortages' on the course website. Not very helpful when your future depends on how well you do - and how well you do often depends on how well you prepare. I should have known then that things didn't look good!
When we started the course we quickly realised that unlike most Sheffield University courses, it had NO websites. Yes, a module that is essentially about WWW (as the main multimedia tool in our lives today) actually hadn't got a website of it's own! A module website is very important to students, as it usually contains information about the exam, course work requirements, lecture handouts and communications from the main lecturer - a good module website is incredibly useful.
The whole module was dogged by uncertainty. As coursework, we had to design a working webpage with multimedia elements such as sound, images and moving pictures - obviously quite a large file that isn't likely to fit onto a single disk. We weren't told until the last week, how we were meant to hand the work in! Even then, we were told to hand our work in on a disk (not enough capacity if you included video) or zip disk (which costs upwards of £8 and you're not likely to get it back). The main lecturer only circulated an email says that you could hand work in on a CD ROM after I had sent her an email asking if we could - you would have thought this was an obvious method (cheap and runs on any CD ROM drve). We also were only told about the exam paper in the last week before our module ended. The whole thing seemed poorly thought out.
So do I get a lot of reading then?
Do not, I repeat DO NOT, undertake this course if you don't want to read much! On average, for each module, they give you a list of about 30 books to read. The thing that we find particularly annoying, is because it's such a new and varied subject, there isn't one text book you can buy with all the answers, unlike for HRM for example. Also you aren't ever told which books on the reading list are good for which type of thing, so I'm afraid you have to trawl through them all to get the relevant info. This will either really appeal to some people (I'm a sad person who likes doing research) or make you want to run screaming for the trees!
There must be summat good about this course!
Well, actually, there are good things - lots of them. Now, I've just given you the bad points (and the worse problem we have had so far) so what are the good points - yes there are some!
*The subject - a bit of a subjective one this (!), but I am really interested in the subject matter. You study a wide range of things, from website design, through e-commerce and learning organisations. It's interesting stuff and something that would be very useful for future employment, as the whole concept of INF is very big at the moment.
*Teaching - in general the lecturers really know their stuff and go out of their way to help you. One lecturer in particular has always gone out of her way to help the students in any way possible and has been an enormous help to me.
*Size of Course - at Sheffield, very few people do INF either on it's own or combined with either Business Studies or Accounting - in fact in my year only 2 people do INF and accounting! This means that you do get a lot better one to one teaching, that you would in another subject area. In Business lectures there can be 300 people and in Information Management around 30.
*Facilities - for INF students, there are designated work room and computers available, something that isn't true of other subjects within the University. Also because of the small number of students, it's unlikely you'll have to wait long to use the computers!
*Newness - as I've said, the relative infancy of the subject does cause problems, but it's also incredibly exciting. The subject area is constantly changing and it's interesting to study something that has no hard and fast answers. A dissertation (see below) paper could be the next important step in the subject
*Dissertation - if you're doing INF combined or INF on it's own, you don't have to do one! YEAH! I only found that out this year, as they'd never mentioned it before. This appeals to all those people who can't face writing 20,000 words on one thing - i.e me!
*They've tried out all the new stuff on me, so by the time you get here, it'll be great!
You've been rambling for ages. Is that it then?!
Yep, so that's Information Management - and if that doesn't put you off, nothing will - only kidding! Despite the problems that I''ve had I would definitely reccomend this course. I enjoy it so much and you have to expect problems when it's such a new subject area. When I build up the enthusiasm, I'll work my way up to a long and boring run down of Business Studies at Sheffield - see ya soon!
INFORMATION
UCAS codes NP42 - Accounting and Information Management NP12 - Business Studies and Information Management P200 - Information Management(Thanks to Clare for the info!)
Advantages: Excellent Course with opportunity Disadvantages: Increasingly dificult to get in
If you are either interested in Management, Computer Science, or simply the Technological Future, then this is a course for you!!! I am currently about to go into my third year and believe me, while the past two years have been tough - the fun and insight I have gained for the future is unbelievable. The huge scope of this course ranges from Starting a New Business, Marketing, Computer Programming, Information World, Statistics, Databases and web Design to name few... And nowadays, especially in the tough employment world in which we live, a course designed for the future is exactly what you need. Check this course out - it will be the best thing you ever do! ...
Advantages: good job prospects Disadvantages: not entirely IT based
I finished this course last year and managed to get work within a month or so of my finals. The course is designed to be a conversion one for those of us who don't have a computer science background, but want to learn. It's not entirely IT related, as it does focus on 'Information' as well, so don't expect to be a Java expert when you finish. If you want to do a more hands-on programming course then PG Information Systems is the course for you.
The course won't teach you everything in a year, but it will give you a grounding. All of us have managed to get jobs from the 18 of us on the course last year in various guises: web design, IT training, lecturing.
There are good and bad parts to it, which is always a matter of preference. If you want a change of career, and more importantly to get funding for it, then do an IT ...
Advantages: Social life, beaches, vocational Disadvantages: reputation as a retirement town, distance from London
I have recently completed a 4yr degree at Bournemouth in Information Systems Management (now called Business Information Systems Management).
I really enjoyed my 4 years there. Besides the course, Bournemouth has a great social scene with lods of bars and clubs (perhaps too many) and has been referred to as the UK's clubbing capital a number of times by popular club mag's.
Being close to the coast is great for Summer too, the beaches are nice and clean and the water swimmable.
Being a vocational university you also have the option of an industrial placement in your 3rd year. This will probably mean more to a future employer than your degree qualification will. Since my graduation I have had a number of offers - all impressed by my university background.
Hope this helps,
Ben. ...
