Longwood University’s College of Business and Economics students take ISCS 471 Systems Analysis & Design if they plan to pursue an Information Systems and Cyber Security (ISCS) concentration. The ISCS concentration is designed to prepare students to plan, design, engineer, and implement secure networks and information systems in today’s modern electronic, mobile, and global environment.
Dr. Laura Poe, Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Cyber Security, recommends students consider an ISCS degree, “The cyber security field continues to expand in response to the increase in data breaches, ransomware, and other cyber-attacks on organizations. This sector of the technology field is lacking in skilled professionals, making it a marketable concentration. Information Systems and technology-based studies take four of the top ten highest paid concentrations/majors based on an analysis conducted by the HEA group [see fig.1]. Longwood University's ISCS program is expanding to provide more industry-related content, such as AWS Cloud Technology, OSINT Strategies, and Enterprise Systems to prepare students to work in the public or private sector.”
The Systems Analysis & Design course introduces students to the formal process of developing computer-based information systems within an organization. Students learn the models and tools used in determining information requirements and the specifications of a new information system. An experiential teaching approach using a guided case study is the primary vehicle for student learning. The Unified Process approach for developing visual models for defining functionality and other system requirements is the basis methodology for system development.
Over the span of 15 weeks, students design, develop, and customize a mobile app using the Mendix platform. Poe, who is currently teaching this course, provided an overview of the course objective, “Systems Analysis and Design is a course that studies the life cycle of system implementations. The best way to study system implementations is through the application of concepts to generate a viable product. Students are required to work in Agile Scrum teams to design an application of their choosing using the low-code Mendix application. They become certified in Mendix as part of the course, which for many students, is their first technical certification. At the end of the course, students will understand how to write and track user stories in JIRA using SAFe Agile Best Practices, design a business process for their application, create the wireframes, develop the domain model and database, develop the Mendix user interface, create security roles, write and perform test cases, and deploy the application. On the last day of the course, each team provides a complete demo of their product. They will experience the full life cycle of a project and be better prepared for a role in the technology industry.”
More information about the ISCS concentration can be found here: https://www.longwood.edu/business/business-administration/#InformationSystemsandCyberSecurityISCS. For more information or to sit in on one of our classes, email the Executive Director of CBE Student Success, David Zirkle, at zirkledw@longwood.edu.
Fig. 1. Top earning college majors graph from: Itzkowitz, Michael. “Which College Majors Pay the Most?” The HEA Group, 18 May 2023, www.theheagroup.com/blog/college-majors-pay-most.