BA Management Science and Information Systems Studies (MSISS)Junior Sophister
The following is a brief overview of the modules taken in Junior Sophister year. Prospective students should read the brief descriptions of the courses below the table which follows.
Current students should refer to my.tcd.ie for full details, including assessment criteria and learning outcomes.
MANDATORY MODULES
STU33001 Software Applications III
10 ECTS credits
This course will introduce students to Visual Basic programming and students will use Visual Basic to learn how to build small software applications. The course will also give students experience in client server database technologies. This course will be based on various databases such as MySQL and Microsoft Access. The course will introduce students to writing database queries using SQL. HTML and PHP will be used to develop user front ends to these databases.
Module Description STU33001 Blackboard
STU33002 Statistical Analysis III
5 ECTS credits
This module lets students develop hands on skills for data analysis. The module comprises one lecture and two lab hours per week. Lectures introduce and discuss various statistical techniques and how these are accessed/implemented through the statistical language R. The labs provide an opportunity for students to build both their problem solving and programming skills through case-study style problems. Students will encounter typical problems in dealing with datasets such as poorly formatted data, missing values and redundant variables. Communication of findings and results through clear plotting and report writing will form part of the lab sessions.
Module Description STU33002 Blackboard
STU33004 Research Methods
5 ECTS credits
Upon completing this module, students should have an understanding of the nature of the research process, drawing upon primary and secondary data sources; be able to locate, analyse and interpret quantitative and qualitative data; and to present the findings.
Module Description STU33004 Blackboard
STU33005 Information Systems
5 ECTS credits
The objective of this module is to introduce students to information systems in business and examines how management information and decision support systems can support improved organisational performance. Information security and control surrounding these systems and aspects of ethical use of IT are also covered. Specific topics addressed in this module include: Business Processes, Transactions and Information; Introduction to telecommunications and network systems; Emerging Technology; Data Warehousing; Decision Support Systems; Business Intelligence; Digital Markets/Digital Goods; Introduction to Information Systems Security and Information Technology and Ethics.
Module Description STU33005 Blackboard
STU33010 Applied Forecasting
5 ECTS credits
In this module several methods of forecasting will be examined, including exponential smoothing and its Holt-Winters extension, auto-regression, moving average, and further regression based methods that take into account seasonal trends of lagged variables (ARIMA). The module will be practical, and will involve every student in extensive analysis of case study material for a variety of time series data.
Module Description STU33010 Blackboard Module Website
STU33011 Multivariate Linear Analysis (MLA)
5 ECTS credits
This module covers classical multivariate techniques of discriminant analysis, principal component analysis, clustering and logistic regression. The course has three strands of dimension reduction, clustering and classification techniques, with a strong emphasis on their use and interpretation. More modern techniques, some of which address the same issues, are covered in the SS module Data Analytics.
STU33008 Management Science Case Studies
10 ECTS credits
The overall aim is to develop students' interpersonal, team working and analytical skills. This is a problem based learning module. It requires students to apply what they have learned in other modules in MSISS in a simulated real life problem. Specific topics addressed include team working, interviewing, problem solving, conflict resolution, reporting writing and self organising skills.
Module Description STU33008 Blackboard
CSU33012 Software Engineering
5 ECTS credits
This module provides students with a solid grounding in various aspects related to building large, important software systems. The overall aim of this course is for students to learn the fundamental skills for building large, important software systems. This entails (i) to recognise the general software lifecycle and its stages from domain analysis to maintenance, (ii) to analyse software in the problem domain, (iii) to identify the fundamental approaches to managing software projects and teams, (iv) to distinguish the roles of stakeholders in a software project in general and in software teams in particular, (v) to recognise architectures for building large-scale distributed software systems. This course covers various aspects related to building software systems ranging from the use of software lifecycle models, to project management, to large-scale software architectures. Specifically, software lifecycle models, including variations of the waterfall and spiral models as well as extreme programming and agile, are introduced along with concepts that are relevant to the specific model stages. These concepts include UML-based O-O, and domain analysis, requirements and specification analysis, testing and debugging, and version control. Moreover, strategies for managing large software projects and their contracts as well as project teams are presented and contrasted.
Module Description CSU33012 Blackboard
ELECTIVE OPTIONS
BUU33530 Financial Accounting
10 ECTS credits
The aim of this module is to develop a deeper understanding of financial accounting and an appreciation for the application of accounting standards, as well as providing information for decision-making and cost-volume profit analysis.
The module is divided into 3 parts:
- Double Entry Accounting System
In developing a deeper understanding of financial accounting and to fully appreciate the application of accounting standards it is necessary to understand the double entry accounting system. This part of the module will include the essential features of the double entry system from the books of prime entry through to the preparation of financial statements.
- International Accounting Standards
This section of the module will cover International Accounting Standards both in terms of theoretical knowledge and practical application. This section of the module is a significant development from the knowledge base acquired in the Senior Freshman module, Introduction to Accounting and Financial Management. Prior to embarking on the standards, the Regulatory and Conceptual framework will also be addressed
- Introduction to Management Accounting
Management accounting deals with the information needs of internal management as distinct from financial accounting which in the main is directed at the needs of external user groups. This section will address the budgeting process, including the management role it plays within organizations. In addition, the practical issue of the preparation of the budget from initial sales forecast to final budgeted income statement, cash flow and balance sheet will be studied. One of the primary objectives of management accounting is to provide information for decision-making and cost-volume profit analysis will be studied as one such example of how the management accounting function can aid short-term decision- making.
Module Description BUU33530 Blackboard
BUU33620 Introduction to Fixed-Income Securities and Alternative Investments
10 ECTS credits
This module is a module in financial management. It will cover: Bond pricing; Types of fixed interest instruments; Duration and convexity; Bond portfolio management; Derivatives Markets and Commodity Markets.
Module Description BUU33620 Blackboard
BUU33630 Corporate Finance and Corporate Valuation
5 ECTS credits
How does a company make a decision to invest in a new production line? Does a firm’s corporate governance structure impact firm value? What, if any, are the ethical aspects of finance? What tools are commonly used to determine the financial health of a company? Does it matter if a company pays dividends, and if so to whom? What sorts of tools are available to tell an investor the return she should expect from a stock? What sort of risks are companies exposed to and how should they manage them? How much should a company pay for another in a merger situation?
These commonly asked financial questions form the core issues that we will address in this course. In the course we will be concerned both with the practice and theory of managerial decision making in relation to these and related questions. Much of this course is related to material that would typically be covered in the Chartered Financial Analyst examination at Level I and Level II for the corporate finance area. The CFA is a professional, graduate level, qualification. It is eminently suited to those who are interested in financial analysis, fund management, equity analysis, financial research etc. Details of the qualification and the CFA institute can be found at their website, www.cfainstitute.org. CFA candidates take three levels of examinations. The required skills etc on which they are examined are contained in the CFA Body of Knowledge. However, please note that this course is independent of and not associated with the CFA Institute.
Module Description BUU33630 Blackboard
ECU33050 Investment Analysis
10 ECTS credits
This module analyses, at both a practical and theoretical level, the process of investment in financial markets. Its aims are to introduce students to the various types of financial instruments in common use and to the economic theories that explain how they are priced. The types of securities considered include interest-bearing securities, equities and derivatives (options, futures, etc.). The focus for the first half of the module will be on fixed income securities and derivatives. As we will see, the principles to be discussed and the analytical tools to be presented have a much wider application in making decisions under conditions of uncertainty. Students are also required to complete a project involving the collection and analysis of financial data. The second half of the module explores how financial markets operate and how securities are bought and sold. The trade-off between higher average returns and more `risky' pay-offs is then discussed. The problem of determining an optimal investment strategy, given beliefs about the probability distribution of returns, is also addressed. Other issues considered include the informational efficiency of financial markets and systematic pricing failures, the role of behavioural biases, and the relative usefulness of fundamental analysis and technical analysis in predicting price movements. This module does not assume previous knowledge of financial economics and for the most part the level of mathematics and statistics does not extend beyond SF Maths and Stats. Students should note, however, that this is an analytical economics module that makes constant use of tools derived from mathematical and statistical concepts. Students interested in working in areas related to investment and finance are likely to find the course of value for their career.
Module Description ECU33050 Blackboard
ECU22010 Intermediate Economics
10 ECTS credits
This module provides students with a broad overview of intermediate-level economy theory, covering both microeconomic theory and macroeconomic theory.
The first part of the module addresses microeconomic theory. The material is built around the study of economic agents (e.g. consumers or producers) maximizing objectives (e.g. utility or profits) in an environment of economic constraints (e.g. income or costs). The theory will be supported by a number of applications (e.g. labour leisure choice or consumption-savings choice).
The second part of the module addresses macroeconomic theory. The material is built around the study of the behaviour of the economy as a whole. The approach is based on microeconomic foundations and progresses from individual maximization problems, as studied in the microeconomics module, to macroeconomic issues and issues confronting the aggregate economy.
Module Description ECU22010 Blackboard
STU22351 Probability and Theoretical Statistics I
5 ECTS credits
This module will describe the fundamentals of probability theory, from the basic axioms of probability to the most commonly used aspects and theorems of the theory. The module covers: Events and Probabilities; The laws of probability; Independence and conditional probability; Discrete random variables; Probability generating functions; Continuous random variables; Multivariate distributions & independence; Moment and characteristic generating functions; The law of averages and The central limit theorem.
Module Description STU22351 Blackboard
CSU33016 Functional Programming
5 ECTS credits
Functional programming languages present a powerful, abstract, and important direction in programming languages. The high level of abstraction and the expressive syntax makes program decomposition and composition unusually easy, while the close connections to the underlying semantics make formal reasoning tractable. Systems such as Google's "Map/Reduce" framework demonstrate the influence of this approach, and the importance to a computer scientist of understanding it.
Module Description CSU33016 Blackboard