Objectives
This pre-course assignment is designed to get you prepared to have success in the course by making sure all of your necessary resources are working for you. You should do the following tasks before the first week of class. Consider printing this webpage and then "checking off" the assignments that you have completed.
Software required: GoDaddy Web Server. Access to Azure: MS Access and MS Visio. UIowa Virtual Desktop. Tableau.
Lecture Support
1) 
View my Pre-Course Assignment video.
This video, along with the steps shown below, will help you get started in this course.
Here are the PowerPoints for my "Pre-Course Assignments." These PowerPoints are used in my pre-course video.
PowerPoint Slides, 3 per page
PowerPoint Slides, 6 per page
PowerPoint Slides, 1 per page
Projects Assignments
2) View this Course Introduction video. This video provides an overview of what we will be doing this semester.
3) View the following support videos:
"Who is Dr. Jerz" (approximately 12 minutes.)
"Videos, Podcasts, and iTunes" approximately 11 minutes.)
"Overview of Moodle" (approximately 25 minutes.) These Moodle videos can also be found in Moodle on the top bar, Help.
4) Review the syllabus. If you have any questions, make a post in the forum "Ask any questions about ..." in this topic.
5) Verify that you can log into ICON and into Moodle. For Moodle, click on the "Information Systems" course link. If this is your first time accessing Moodle, create an account following the 7 steps, when you get an email from Moodle, click on its link and enter the "enrollment" key that I emailed to you in my "Welcome" email. Let me know if you encounter any problems. Here is a short video showing you how to set up your Moodle account.
"Accessing Moodle" (approximately 1 minutes.)
6) In Moodle, go to the "Introduce Yourself" forum and provide your coursemates with some interesting information about yourself. This is an example of a "discussion forum" in Moodle. (1 point)
7) In Moodle, click on the "Submit Photo" assignment link. Submit a photo (or any file). This gives you a chance to see how to submit files into Moodle. You will be submitting a lot of files during the semester. You will also experience this "submit" feature when you edit your Moodle profile and submit your User Photo (step 2, above.) If you haven't updated your profile photo yourself, I might use your submitted photo for you. (3 points)
8) In Moodle, complete the Student Information Survey. This is an example of a Moodle "quiz." Remember to "submit" this when you are finished. This "quiz" will not be automatically graded since it contains open-ended questions that I must grade. I usually grade these assignments within a day or so of submittal. (10 points)
9) If you have an iPod/iPhone or other multimedia player, you might want to see if you can get the course podcast videos into iTunes. Usually, I prefer playing the videos from behind my computer. In my "Videos, Podcasts, iTunes" video, I show you how to get these various video feeds into iTunes (copy this feed URL, go to iTunes, click on Files | Subscribe to Podcast, and paste the feed URL into the textbox.) In other "feed aggregators," the process is very similar. Refer to my webpage on Videos, Podcasts, and iTunes (shown in Moodle.)
10) Browse the textbook and get a sense of the topics that we will be covering in this course.
A few days before the course starts, I will let you know (via an email) that Chapter 1 materials are available. You will be able to begin this chapter before the course officially starts.
11) Let me know if you have any questions or encounter any problems.
Lynda.com Videos
12) Log into Lynda.com. Remember that The University of Iowa has its own entry to this company at http://lynda.uiowa.edu. Your Hawkeye username and password should work. If you go to the public location, http://lynda.com, your Hawkeye login (and free account) will not work.
Find the course titled "Learning How to Manage a Hosted Web Site" with Ray Villalobos. Watch the following episodes before getting your GoDaddy account, below.
- Welcome (45s )
- Introducing servers (2m 18s)
- Understanding the different types of hosting providers (3m 0s)
- Choosing server features (5m 8s)
- Getting a domain name (3m 55s )
- Purchasing a domain with cPanel (2m 4s)
13) Explore some of the other video training available on Lynda.com. I find that it helps to always "log out" of Lynda.com when I am finished. If I forget to do this, sometimes I have difficulty logging back in.
For Macintosh users interested in installing a PC emulator on your Mac, consider watching "Installing Windows 8 in VMware Fusion with Doug Winnie."
Projects Assignments
14) Watch my Pre-course video and create your GoDaddy as directed. If you want to understand what you are getting into, watch the Lynda.com episodes first, in particular, "Getting a domain name". Your goal is to get a GoDaddy account with your own personal domain name, whatever you choose. If you need to, you can phone the general GoDaddy support number, or you can email Carly Cook, a GoDaddy support person who knows me and our course, and arrange a time to speak with her. carly66101818@secureservernet.onmicrosoft.com.
Note: Already there has been a slight modification in the GoDaddy Web Hosting cost. I made this video for Spring19. You will also see this video in the "Administrative Videos" section.
As a minimum, purchase a 12-month Linux Economy sever with "Domain Privacy Protection." The Domain Privacy feature tends to prevent unsolicited emails being sent to you from companies that monitor new domains. The cost should be around $74 (at this point in time, but sometimes prices change.)
Note: In some previous semesters, student have found discount codes for GoDaddy, as much as 50%. I am not sure where they find these, but I thought that I would mention it. If anyone finds one of these discount codes, please post it in our discussion forum.
15) Follow my directions in the pre-course video and create your own "homepage" for your GoDaddy web server. Post your domain name in the assignment forum on Moodle. (10 points)
16) You need to verify that you have access to both MS Visio and MS Access, two software programs that are not normally included with the MS Office suite. Are they on your computer? If not, go to a STSG computer lab and prove that you find and start these programs. If you are not on campus, try to find these products on a computer, such as your friend's computer, a library, or work computer. These products are not on the UIowa Virtual Desktop.
If you need or want to, you can install these products on your own computer by downloading them for free from the Microsoft Azure website (formerly known as "Imagine.") Students can now sign-up for an Azure account at https://azureforeducation.microsoft.com/devtools using their HawkID.
Go ahead and access Azure, download MS Visio, and install it onto your computer. If you already have this product, try downloading another product. Remember to record the license number (some products will have these). If needed, download and install Microsoft Access (note, if you are going to be installing Office, you might not need Access separately.) If you are a Macintosh owner, neither product can be installed in Mac OS. Instead, consider buying an emulator, such as VMware or Parallels, creating a virtual PC, and then installing Visio and Access. STSG and ITS can help with these installs. Get starting now! Don't wait until the day that assignments are due.
17) We will be using a visualization software product called "Tableau" later in the semester. If you plan to work from a College of Business lab computer, verify that you can open Tableau. If you plan to work from your own computer, you will eventually need to install Tableau. There is both a PC and a Mac version of Tableau available. Here are the instructions from Tableau about how to get and install this product:
- To access the latest version, please go to https://www.tableau.com/tft/activation. Typically, the download will start immediately.
- Once installed, use the following Desktop Key to activate Tableau: TCRU-8F3D-3190-4AE7-1AEA.
18) Access the UIowa Virtual Desktop. You might need the help of ITS or STSG because often, the Virtual Desktop will want to install some additional (helper) software. When you are finally in, try starting Microsoft Excel, create a file, save it, close Excel, open Excel, and then re-open your document just to make sure that you can complete a full circle.
Discussion Topics (on Moodle)
After completing the chapter project, make a minimum of two (2) posts to any of the original questions, and two (2) posts (replies) to other students' responses. This is a minimum of four (4) total posts. However, you may need to make more than four to accumulate the 8 total points because some topics are worth 2 points, and some worth 1 point, or if your post is short you might only receive 1 point. You can always make more posts. Note, you must make these posts by Thursday evening, June 13, 11:55PM, if you want to receive credit.
19a) 2pts - Describe your success or lack of success with signing up for your GoDaddy account.
19b) 2pts - Describe your success or lack of success with accessing the Microsoft Azure account. You might want to talk about software products that you downloaded, or plan to download. You might discuss your success of downloading and installing MS Visio to your computer (especially Mac users.)
19c) 2pts - Describe your success or lack of success with accessing the UIowa Virtual Desktop. For example, were you able to create an Excel file? Were you able to get other software to run? Were you able to save or load a file from your flash drive?
19d) 2pts - Provide some comments about Lynda.com. For example, were you aware of this resource? What did you find of interest?
19e) 2pts - Did you have success getting the podcast feeds into your mobile device? Share your results.
19f) 2pts - Describe your success or lack of success getting your Tableau license, downloading the product, and installing it on your PC or Mac. Or let us know if you had success getting to the product in one of the College of Business computer labs.
19g) 2pts - What did you enjoy doing the most in this pre-course assignment? What did you find most beneficial?
19h) 2pts - What was the most difficult part of this overall pre-course assignment?