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ISIT 102
Systems
Case study
Week: October 16th,
2015
Due date: At the beginning of the ISIT102 Tutorial of week 11, (22/11/2015).
This means reports and presentations must be handed in:
• For the Monday tutorial
o At 16:30 pm sharp, not at 16:45pm nor any later on. Any delay on that day
will result in 10% deduction from your mark.
• For the Tuesday tutorial
o At 10:30 am sharp, not at 10:45pm nor any later on. Any delay on that day
will result in 10% deduction from your mark
Last Name First Name Student ID Signature
The learning outcomes of this case study include:
1. Applying your knowledge of Porter’s five competitive to assess their impact on the
strategy of a University in selecting either a quarter-based curriculum or a semesterbased
one.
2. Exploring and assessing the business value chains
3. Read and solve a case study by producing a business report
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Directions:
1. You must read the case study very carefully.
2. Before answering the questions, you may consult additional information from the
web, the electronic resources available from the UoW or UoWD . Just make sure to
reference any source of information you used.
3. You are expected to produce a business report to present your answers and
solutions to the case study.
4. The structure of your business report should follow the guidelines used by UOW. You
will find the required information at http://unilearning.uow.edu.au/report/4b.html.
5. It is very important to justifying your answers using business-oriented facts.
6. You must submit to the lecturer a typewritten copy of this handout with your
typewritten report, and a power point presentation.
7. The submission deadline for all groups forms all tutorial groups is set to at the
beginning of the ISIT102 Tutorial of week 11, (22/11/2015). This means reports
and presentations must be handed in:
a. For the Monday tutorial at 16:30 pm sharp, not at 16:45pm nor any later on.
Any delay on that day will result in 10% deduction from your mark.
b. For the Tuesday tutorial at 10:30 am sharp, not at 10:45pm nor any later on.
Any delay on that day will result in 10% deduction from your mark.
8. Presentations will start at the beginning of the tutorials of week 11.
• All members of the tutorial MUST be present at the start of the tutorial. Groups
will be called on randomly.
• If a group is not present when called on, then a 10% penalty will be applied to
all its members.
• If your group is called on, and you are n absent, unless you have a medical
justification, your presentation mark will be zero.
9. Each group will be allocated 15 minutes for the presentation, followed by 5 minutes
of questions.
10. All members of the group must be able to answer any of the asked questions.
Therefore, it is advisable that all members of the group should be active participants
in this case study.
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Advice:
• You have all of week7, week 8, week 9, and week 10 to work on the case study. Do
not wait until week 10.
• The sooner you start your assignment the more time you will have.
• Each member of your group should read the assignment ,
• Then you should discuss it as a group.
• After that you may assign tasks to each member of the group
• Keep in mind that each member of the group is expected to be knowledgeable of the
entire case.
• You have enough time to produce a good work if you succeed in
COLLABORATING as members of team.
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Case Study
Which university system will you advise? Quarter or Semester?
In this case study, you will act as a system analyst who will advise a local university to
select either a semester-based curriculum or a quarter based one.
A. Background information about quarter and semester based curriculum
In the United States, world famous universities such as The Ohio State University, the
University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of California at Davis (UC
Davis), Stanford University, Caltech University operate on the quarter system, in which the
academic year is broken into four terms (including summer) of about 10 weeks each. Most
students at these schools attend three quarters a year:
• Fall
• Winter,
• Spring,
• Summer is optional. Students may choose not to attend the summer.
Other universities (in fact, the majority in the United States) operate on the semester system,
where the year is broken into three terms of 15 weeks each:
• Fall,
• Spring,
• Summer is optional. Most students attend only the fall and spring semesters.
B. Which system is better?
Students and faculty, two of the main actors in a university, have different opinions on the
relative merits of the two systems.
Academically speaking, one unit of credit in the quarter systems is worth two-thirds a unit of
credit in the semester system. The following table summarizes some of the most cited of
arguments:
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Table 1. Some of the most cited arguments cited by students and faculty (professors)
Pros Cons
Quarter session
A. Students
• You can take more classes in a
quarter-based curriculum
• You will have less incentive to take a
frivolous class such as ballroom
dancing for an elective.
• If you happen to take a bad class
(boring subject), your experience will
be relatively shorter than in a
semester system.
• You will have the chance to
interacting with more professors
B. Professors
• The system offers more flexibility
for professors.
A. Students
• You may feel that learning is too fast
paced
• You will exam at a much higher
frequency.
• If by mischance you get sick for a
week, you will have a very hard time
getting up to date in your classes
• The session is too short for students to
work on serious projects.
• You are out of synchronization with the
majority of the other universities
(They adopt the semester system).
B. Professors
• They will have to accomplish more
work.
Semester session
A. Students
• A student has more time to focus on
difficult subjects
• Courses are not as fast paced as in the
quarter system
• Students have more time to work on
serious projects
• Students have more time for meeting
other students, practicing sports,
hobbies.
B. Students
• Some subjects do not need a full
semester
• The session is too long to remember
course content for finals.
• The experience of a bad class will last
forever.
The above table did not include any arguments about costs? Yet, cost is an important
factor for both private and public universities. Academic and administrative staff has to be
paid. Students have to pay tuition fees. Utilities like electricity, internet, gas, water need also
be paid.
According to Porter’s, every new term, be it quarter or semester, a set business processes
are needed ever faculty or college of a university. The following list includes some of the
necessary processes that must be initiated at the start of a term (quarter, or semester).
a) Adjust enrollments via add/ drop
b) Allocate classrooms and related equipment
c) Allocate final exam rooms,
d) Hire invigilators
e) Enroll students , plan open days, orientation days
f) Grade finals
g) Prepare and print course subject outlines,
h) Record final grades
i) Recruit and hire needed new adjunct lecturers.
j) Schedule classes
k) Schedule finals
l) Staff classes
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Each of these processes may have a substantial cost. If we assume that summer is
negligible,
• Then, a quarter system has three sessions while the semester system has two
sessions,
• Therefore, a university will need to incur the costs of these processes three times a
year in a quarter systems, but only two times a year in a semester system.
Intuitively, it may seem more economical to go for a semester system than a quarter systems.
However, this has to be proven ( it is part of your task).
C. Your task
A major university in your city has been using the quarter system. Recently this university
has raised significantly the tuition fee. The president of the university has been considering
switching to a semester-based curriculum. He asked your consulting company to prepare a
business report on the possibility of a switch to semesters.
The report you are to produce should determine if the switch will constitute a
competitive advantage for this university.
The following is a list of actions that will help you in your task:
1. Expand the above table of pros and cons. You may use a search engine like Google,
or refer to recent academic publications (from either 2014 or 2015).
2. Enrich the above list business processes involved in starting a new term (some crucial
activities may be missing)
o Examples are processes to develop the roster of classes, to staff classes, and
to enroll students.
o Name as many more of the processes required as you can.
3. Pick three processes from your list and explain their sources of cost.
4. List and describe five factors that you think could be keeping a university that is on a
quarter system from converting to a semester system. You must justify your
choices. Base you analysis on:
• Porter’s competitive forces model
• Porter’s value chain model
• Porter’s strategies for competitive advantages
5. What are the competitive forces that face the university? Which ones can be linked
to the semester-quarter system?
6. Analyze the value chain model of the university.
• Map the different business processes to Porter’s value chain model.
• Identify which if any of its main activites are impacted or can impact the
choice of quarter/semester.
7. Similarly consider strategies the university can use for competitive advantages. How
can the choice of quarter/semester impact a completive advantage or disadvantage?
8. Using the results you gathered from tasks (1) to (7), produce a business report that
will advise the university president whether to switch to a semester curriculum or
not. The report should document and justify all your finding.
Hint:
• Keep in mind that asides from the sheer cost of these processes, the views of
students and lecturers are crucial. Justify their importance. What is the role of
students in Porter’s models? What is the role of lecturers in Porter’s models?
• Hence, you should conduct surveys for both students and lecturers about the
topic.
