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Preface
• Collaboration
• Experimentation
For reasons set out in Chapter 1, we believe the MIS course is the single best course in the
business curriculum for learning these four key skills.

Today’s Role for Professors

What is our role as MIS professors? Students don’t need us for definitions; they have the Web for
that. They don’t need us for detailed notes; they have the PowerPoints. Consequently, when we at-
tempt to give long and detailed lectures, student attendance falls. And this situation is even more
dramatic for online courses.
We need to construct useful and interesting experiences for students to apply MIS knowledge
to their goals and objectives. In this mode, we are more like track coaches than the chemistry pro-
fessor of the past. And our classrooms are more like practice fields than lecture halls. 2
Of course, the degree to which each of us moves to this new mode depends on our goals, our
students, and our individual teaching styles. Nothing in the structure or content of this edition
assumes that a particular topic will be presented in a nontraditional manner. But every chapter
contains materials suitable for use with a coaching approach, if desired.
In addition to the chapter feature titled So What?, all chapters include a collaboration exercise
that students can use for team projects inside and outside of class. As with earlier editions, each chap-
ter contains three guides that describe practical implications of the chapter contents that can be used
for small in-class exercises. Additionally, every chapter concludes with a case study that can be the
basis for student activities. Finally, this edition contains 39 application exercises (see page 520).

Falcon Security and PRIDE Cases

Each part and each chapter opens with a scenario intended to get students involved emotionally,
if possible. We want students to mentally place themselves in the situation and to realize that this
situation—or something like it—could happen to them. Each scenario sets up the chapter’s con-
tent and provides an obvious example of why the chapter is relevant to them. These scenarios help
support the goals of student motivation and learning transfer.
Furthermore, both of these introductory cases involve the application of new technology to
existing businesses. Our goal is to provide opportunities for students to see and understand how
businesses are affected by new technology and how they need to adapt while, we hope, providing
numerous avenues for you to explore such adaptation with your students.
In developing these scenarios, we endeavor to create business situations rich enough to real-
istically carry the discussions of information systems while at the same time simple enough that
students with little business knowledge and even less business experience can understand. We
also attempt to create scenarios that will be interesting to teach. This edition introduces the new
Falcon Security case and continues the PRIDE Systems case from the eighth edition.

Falcon Security

The chapters in Parts 1 and 2 are introduced with dialogue from key players at Falcon Security, a
privately owned company that provides surveillance and inspection services for companies using
flying drones. We wanted to develop the case around an interesting business model that students
would want to learn more about. Drones get a lot of attention in the press, but students may not
know a lot about how they’re used in business. Drones are getting cheaper and easier to fly and
have a lot more functionality than they did just a few years ago. It’s likely that students will see
drones deployed widely during their careers.