| Extended Course Description: | Catalog Course Description:
Examines electronic services that deliver "published" information to an organization from external sources. Relates these services to functions such as planning, marketing, and research. Shows ways of monitoring the organization's larger environments, such as the economy, government, competitors, and new technologies.
This course introduces students to the core concepts of information services as they apply to the essential techniques for retrieving, analyzing, organizing and presenting information. The skills learned in this course are transferable to any information seeking activity whether it is in a large research and development lab, or a small start-up company. The overall goal of this course is that upon completion, each student can produce a systematic and accurate method for recovering, analyzing, and disseminating needed information in any setting.
Pre-requisites and Co-requisites:
INFO 105 Information Evaluation, Organization and Use
Junior standing
Curriculum Role:
This course is part of a concentration option Information Retrieval and Analysis (INFO 300 and INFO 435) for the BSIS.
Course Rationale:
This course provides students with search skills necessary for basic competitive intelligence activities, including exposure to external resources (databases) and the development of search strategies.
Course Outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, a student will be able to:
• Identify internal competitive intelligence information requirements and match appropriate resources to them
• Identify and evaluate relevant external information resources to support a company’s competitive intelligence initiatives
• Effectively plan, execute, modify and analyze complex information searches in selected information retrieval systems and search engines on the WWW
• Prepare a SWOT analysis to support corporate planning and decision making
Course Content:
Principal topics and the approximate number of weeks devoted to each are:
• Introduction to CI (1)
• Internal and external sources of business information (1)
• Information retrieval basics (1)
• Dialog (1)
• Lexis/Nexis (1)
• Web search and evaluation of search engines and content on the WWW (1)
• Library databases (1)
• Analysis (2)
• Dissemination (1)
Presentation:
Note: Presentation method may vary somewhat from section to section.
This course centers around the completion of a competitive intelligence project through requirements analysis, intelligence gathering, SWOT analysis, and targeted briefing. Teaching methods include lecture, presentations by industry professionals, class discussion, and hands-on work outside of class.
Assessment:
Note: Assessment method may vary somewhat from section to section.
Evaluation is based upon homework assignments, and a term-length project.
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