Fundamentals – Theory
Credits: 3 ECTS
Prof. B. Garbinato and M. Humbert
Next occurrence: Spring 2023
Main objectives
Digital transformation is the next step of the digital revolution: Information and Communication Technology (ICT), after having essentially been a means to optimize existing business processes, is becoming today the vector of profound transformations, even brutal disruptions. In addition, ICT being a market of innovation, today's technological breakthroughs tend to become commodities very quickly, often in just a few years.
For this reason, being able to closely monitor, understand and critically assess innovations in computer science is an essential skill for any organisation or manager willing to keep up with its competitors, or even better, to get a competitive edge. Here however, merely reading executive summaries and professional journals reporting what other companies are doing is not enough, especially if one has the ambition to be the disruptor rather than the disrupted.
The goal of this course is precisely to address this challenge, by teaching students the basis of the computer science research methodology, i.e., how the research community in computer science is ideating, developing, testing and validating new ideas and concepts. Through this course, students will learn to identify and read relevant research papers with a critical view, to extract and understand key innovations from those papers and to evaluate the scope and validity of those innovations. This course is also an introduction to research in computer science for students who consider pursuing their curriculum with an academic master thesis and/or doctoral studies in ICT.
Content overview
The course is structured around a set of fundamental questions related to computer science research and associated methodology, some of which are listed hereafter.
- What is research? Why do it in universities? What is the basis of the scientific method?
- What is specific about computer science research? What is its methodology?
- What is the notion of state of the art and why is it important in research?
- What is a scientific publication and what is the process to produce one?
- How is research in computer science evaluated? Where is it published?
- How is the computer science research community organized?
- What are some key research areas in computer science?
Credits: 3 ECTS
Prof. Stéphanie Missonier
Next occurrence: Spring 2023
Content overview and approach
This course is designed to provide PhD students the fundamental aspects of IS theories and methodologies. The purpose of this course is to provide an overview of theories using and developing in IS and the main methodological approaches.
The course is designed to be very interactive and thus participation is crucial. Each student contributes to the success of the class. Therefore, each student should come to class having read and thought about the articles/readings for the week (details of the reading list and assignments Moodle : IS Theories and Methods Spring 2017). The purpose of classes is to discuss what you have learnt from the readings and to clarify points you did not understand.
Main objectives
The main objective of the course is to familiarise students with the basic assumptions, concepts, theories and methodologies underlying the IS field. More precisely, at this end of this course, students will:
1. Develop a broad foundation of knowledge of the theories associated with IS research
2. Understand the key theories and classic writings used in IS research
3. Understand the strengths and weaknesses of the commonly used research methodologies in IS
4. Learn to evaluate theoretical contribution in research
5. Be well versed in the process of publishing IT related research in IS