Faculty of Information Technology
FIT9130 Systems Analysis and Design
Assignment One: Portfolio
Semester 2, 2017
Assignment Overview
The purpose of this assignment is to provide you with feedback as you study the unit throughout the semester. While other assignments and the exam are means by which we assess your performance, this assignment is intended to help you gauge your own progress with feedback on several small tasks throughout the semester.
This portfolio assignment consists of a number of activities organised into two categories: reading and reflection, and modelling exercises. For the reading exercises, you will submit two short reflective critiques and receive feedback from your tutor. For the modelling exercises, you will meet with your tutor for face-toface feedback and discussion of your designs.
Assignment Due Date
Category 1 Reading Critiques
• First critique: 5pm Friday 1 September, 2017 (Week 6)
• Second critique: 5pm Friday 13 October, 2017 (Week 11)
Category 2 Modelling Tasks
• First task submission: 5pm Friday 8 September, 2017 (Week 7), with feedback session in the following week.
• Second task submission: 5pm Friday 6 October, 2017 (Week 10), with feedback session in the following week.
Feedback sessions will be booked with your tutor in the class in the week prior to the session. Failure to attend the feedback session will result in the submission not being assessed.
Assignment Value
Each activity has equal weight and your overall result for the assignment will be the sum of your marks for each activity divided by four.
Your result for the entire assignment contributes 10% of the marks to your final FIT9130 result.
Learning Objectives
Successful completion of this assignment will lead to:
• understanding of the underlying principles, theories and concepts relevant to the design of information systems; and
• skills in using various techniques, including modelling techniques, to design information systems.
: Portfolio
Submission
Turnitin – Category 1 Reading Critiques Only
Turnitin is an online tool to assist students and staff in understanding and supporting the ethical and appropriate use of materials. Students are required to submit an electronic version (in .doc format and WITHOUT the cover page) of Category One submissions only through the Moodle site of this unit. There is no need to submit your Category Two submissions for analysis.
Turnitin generates the initial originality report quickly. However, if you resubmit your assignment for analysis, there will be a 24 hour delay before a new report is generated.
You are permitted multiple submissions to Turnitin until the due date of the relevant task. You may want to make improvements based on the report and resubmit it through the same Turnitin submission link. Each submission will overwrite the previous submission and only the last submission / originality report will be viewed.
Further details can be found at: http://vle.monash.edu/supporttraining/learnbytech/turnitin/index-student.html
Submission Procedure
All students should submit their submissions via the relevant link on Moodle. Category 1 tasks will be submitted via a TurnItIn link. Category 2 will be via a standard Moodle Assignment link. Both types of submission are performed via Moodle.
Each submission must:
• Be either -
i. a PDF or JPEG image in the case of diagrams (if using Visio, export your diagrams to the appropriate format, do not attach Visio files directly), or
ii. PDF or Microsoft Word in the case of text-based submissions.
• For the modelling submissions, include a properly completed coversheet
• Include your name and student ID in the file name
Do not submit Visio or other drawing software documents for Category 2. Export to PDF or JPEG first.
Submissions for Category 2 tasks must be submitted in the week prior to your feedback session.
Assessment Criteria
In the case of written reflective pieces:
1. Depth of analysis (critical thinking, richness of arguments such as application and examples supported by theories / literature reviews / industrial experiences)
2. Quality of expression (academic writing with appropriate references, grammar, structure and format) In the case of design exercises:
1. Quality of the design (completeness and depth of analysis showing cognitive and logical skills)
2. Correctness of the use of the relevant technique (demonstrating sound knowledge and skills of the relevant technique)
All criteria will have equal weighting in determining your mark for the submission.
Extensions/Special Consideration
All applications for special consideration must be made no later than two days after the submission date, and must be made using the Special Consideration Application form available via the Unit’s Moodle site. You must read the associated Special Consideration policy outlining the grounds for granting special consideration, and attach the appropriate documentation to your form. Submit your form to your lecturer not your tutor.
Do not assume that submission of a Special Consideration application guarantees that it will be granted – you must receive confirmation that it has been granted from the lecturer.
Penalty for Late Submission
Late submissions without an approved extension will be subject to a penalty of 10 marks per day. Weekends count as a single day. No submission will be accepted more than one week late.
Plagiarism and Collusion
Note that this is an individual assignment. While general collaboration between students in terms of understanding of modelling concepts is acceptable, the assignment and the solution contained in it must be entirely your own work.
You must not:
• Use another student’s work as the basis for your own.
• Use another student’s work to help ‘give you ideas’
• Steal, appropriate or make use of the work of another student without their knowledge.
• Lend your work to another student for any reason
• Borrow work from another student for any reason
• Use the ideas, words or other intellectual property of anyone without proper attribution.
• Leave your work unattended on the student laboratory computers, or give your authcate details to anyone.
Reference to students above includes both former and current students, as well as students in other units.
Penalties for plagiarism and/or collusion can include formal reprimands, notes being attached to your student file, failure in the assignment, failure in the unit or even suspension or exclusion from the university.
See the Unit Guide for more information on plagiarism and cheating, and for links to Faculty and University policies on this topic.
Portfolio Activities Category One – Reading and Critique
Submit two reflective pieces of approximately 500 words each.
Submissions should be well structured (introduction, body and conclusion, with a coherent argument throughout) and properly referenced using APA style, and clearly identify the reading being critiqued.
All readings can be found online by searching the Library’s website.
Your critique should not just be a summary of the reading. See the attached guide for writing a critique from the University of Queensland. In particular we will be looking to see how you integrate what you learn from the reading with what you’ve learnt elsewhere in the unit, such as from the lectures or the other readings assigned each week.
Readings to select from:
1. Mattelmäki, T., Vaajakallio, K., & Koskinen, I. (2014). What Happened to Empathic Design? Design Issues, 30(1), 67-77.
2. Davies, I., Green, P., Rosemann, M., Indulska, M., & Gallo, S. (2006). How Do Practitioners Use Conceptual Modeling in Practice? Data & Knowledge Engineering, 58(3), 358-380.
3. Weber, R. (2003) Conceptual Modelling and Ontology: Possibilities and Pitfalls. Journal of Database Management, 14(3), 1-20.
4. Conboy, K., & Morgan, L. (2011). Beyond the Customer: Opening the Agile Systems Development Process. Information and Software Technology, 53(5), 535-542.
5. Nelson, R.R., & Jansen, K.J. (2009) Mapping and Managing Momentum in IT Projects. MIS Quarterly Executive, 8(3), 141-148.
Category Two – Design Exercises
Complete the following modelling tasks, and submit one of your designs in Week 7, and one of your designs in Week 10. For these category two exercises, you will be required to attend a feedback session on your work with your tutor (off-campus students will use telephone or Skype as agreed with your tutor). The session will be a one-on-one session where you will explain your design to your tutor and answer questions about your design. Your tutor will also ask you to change your design by suggesting alternative design requirements. Feedback sessions will be held in Weeks 8 and 11 – the week following submission on Moodle.
It is compulsory to attend your feedback session. Your tutor will schedule your session in the week prior to the session. If you are unable to attend your feedback session, you must apply for special consideration. Submissions will receive 0 marks if the session is missed without special consideration approval.
Exercises
For the following scenario:
Task 1 (Week 7): Draw a logical entity relationship diagram. Indicate primary and foreign keys appropriately.
Task 2 (Week 10): Draw a use case diagram and set of matching system sequence diagrams.
KickBooster is a crowd-funding website that allows innovators and investors to connect with each other. The idea of KickBooster is that it allows people to promise funds to projects, with those funds only being paid if a certain funding level is achieved. This allows innovators to get access to lots of small funding amounts, but protects funders from investing in something that never gets enough support to get off the ground. The management team at KickBooster have asked you to design a logical data model that will be used for the platform.
KickBooster members can be innovators or investors (or both!). Members register with the site using an email address, password, and short biography. Innovator members can propose a project, looking for funds from investor members. Each project has a title, a description, and a funding threshold which, if reached, means that the project will go ahead. Projects have a start date (when they’re listed on the site) and a closing date (when the funding threshold has to have been reached). To attract investors, innovators determine a series of rewards for their project, dependent on the amount of money invested. For example, a recent project to launch a new album by a band had investment amounts of $5 to get your name listed on the back of the album cover as a contributor, $10 to get a copy of the album when released, and $100 for the band to come and perform at an event that you hold.
Investors must be members of KickBooster. To invest, they select a level of investment they’d like to commit to. Essentially, they’re promising to invest the amount specified if the funding threshold for the project is reached. When that threshold is reached, then the investors’ selected payment method is automatically charged. Payment can be made by credit card or PayPal, and the details of these are recorded when the investment commitment is made. These funds are then paid by KickBooster into the nominated bank account of the innovator, with 5% being retained by KickBooster as their fee. The innovator’s bank details are recorded when the project is set up. Each payment
(from investors, as well as to innovators) needs to be recorded.
Tips on writing a critique
Writing a critique involves evaluating a piece of work. In this case you’re writing short critiques of journal articles. Although the term sounds like you need to be critical of the work, it doesn’t mean that your evaluation has to be negative. The idea is to highlight strengths and weaknesses in the argument being put forward, and to evaluate it in the context of your knowledge of the area. Your critique should not be a summary of the article (although you do need to quickly summarise the main ideas), but rather a discussion of the ideas. In short, you’re putting forward your opinion of the piece and possibly putting it into a broader context based on your other readings or in applying it to the field of information systems.
Attached is a guide to writing critiques from the University of Queensland that includes a checklist of things to make sure you do.
Keep in mind that these are meant to be short reflective pieces, not extended essays. Your work should highlight one or two key ideas that you think are important and describe how they relate to your learning in the unit.


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Writing a critique
What is a critique?
A critique is a genre of academic writing that briefly summarises and critically evaluates a work or concept. Critiques can be used to carefully analyse a variety of works such as:
Creative works – novels, exhibits, film, images, poetry
Research – monographs, journal articles, systematic reviews, theories Media – news reports, feature articles
Like an essay, a critique uses a formal, academic writing style and has a clear structure, that is, an introduction, body and conclusion. However, the body of a critique includes a summary of the work and a detailed evaluation. The purpose of an evaluation is to gauge the usefulness or impact of a work in a particular field.
Why do we write critiques?
Writing a critique on a work helps us to develop:
A knowledge of the work’s subject area or related works.
An understanding of the work’s purpose, intended audience, development of argument, structure of evidence or creative style.
A recognition of the strengths and weaknesses of the work.
How to write a critique
Before you start writing, it is important to have a thorough understanding of the work that will be critiqued.
Study the work under discussion.
Make notes on key parts of the work.
Develop an understanding of the main argument or purpose being expressed in the work. Consider how the work relates to a broader issue or context.
There are a variety of ways to structure a critique. You should always check your unit materials or blackboard site for guidance from your lecturer. The following template, which showcases the main features of a critique, is provided as one example.
Introduction
Typically, the introduction is short (less than 10% of the word length) and you should:
Name the work being reviewed as well as the date it was created and the name of the author/creator.
Describe the main argument or purpose of the work.
Explain the context in which the work was created. This could include the social or political context, the place of the work in a creative or academic tradition, or the relationship between the work and the creator’s life experience.
Have a concluding sentence that signposts what your evaluation of the work will be. For instance, it may indicate
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whether it is a positive, negative, or mixed evaluation.
Summary
Briefly summarise the main points and objectively describe how the creator portrays these by using techniques, styles, media, characters or symbols. This summary should not be the focus of the critique and is usually shorter than the critical evaluation.
Critical evaluation
This section should give a systematic and detailed assessment of the different elements of the work, evaluating how well the creator was able to achieve the purpose through these. For example: you would assess the plot structure, characterisation and setting of a novel; an assessment of a painting would look at composition, brush strokes, colour and light; a critique of a research project would look at subject selection, design of the experiment, analysis of data and conclusions.
A critical evaluation does not simply highlight negative impressions. It should deconstruct the work and identify both strengths and weaknesses. It should examine the work and evaluate its success, in light of its purpose.
Examples of key critical questions that could help your assessment include:
Who is the creator? Is the work presented objectively or subjectively?
What are the aims of the work? Were the aims achieved?
What techniques, styles, media were used in the work? Are they effective in portraying the purpose?
What assumptions underlie the work? Do they affect its validity?
What types of evidence or persuasion are used? Has evidence been interpreted fairly?
How is the work structured? Does it favour a particular interpretation or point of view? Is it effective?
Does the work enhance understanding of key ideas or theories? Does the work engage (or fail to engage) with key concepts or other works in its discipline?
This evaluation is written in formal academic style and logically presented. Group and order your ideas into paragraphs. Start with the broad impressions first and then move into the details of the technical elements. For shorter critiques, you may discuss the strengths of the works, and then the weaknesses. In longer critiques, you may wish to discuss the positive and negative of each key critical question in individual paragraphs.
To support the evaluation, provide evidence from the work itself, such as a quote or example, and you should also cite evidence from related sources. Explain how this evidence supports your evaluation of the work.
Conclusion
This is usually a very brief paragraph, which includes:
A statement indicating the overall evaluation of the work
A summary of the key reasons, identified during the critical evaluation, why this evaluation was formed. In some circumstances, recommendations for improvement on the work may be appropriate. Reference list
Include all resources cited in your critique. Check with your lecturer/tutor for which referencing style to use.

Checklist for a critique
Have I:
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Mentioned the name of the work, the date of its creation and the name of the creator?
Accurately summarised the work being critiqued?
Mainly focused on the critical evaluation of the work?
Systematically outlined an evaluation of each element of the work to achieve the overall purpose?
used evidence, from the work itself as well as other sources, to back and illustrate my assessment of elements of of the work?
formed an overall evaluation of the work, based on critical reading?
used a well structured introduction, body and conclusion? used correct grammar, spelling and punctuation; clear presentation; and appropriate referencing style?
Further information
University of New South Wales - some general criteria for evaluating works
University of Toronto - The book review or article critique

License.
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