Master Business Informatics

The Business Informatics program is comprised of a two year curriculum at Utrecht University. The program has international orientation and leads to a Master of Science (MSc) degree in Information Science. Students can enter the Master’s programme twice a year, i.e. in and September. Please browse through this website and find all info about our alumni, collaboration partners, study program and admission procedure.

Since its start in 2003, over 80 students from 10 different countries entered the MBI in Utrecht. The program provides a stimulating atmosphere in which students actively participate in-group activities, do projects, and are involved in ongoing research. In close contact with the practice field of ICT management, consultancy and development, our program builds upon the fast growing knowledge at the cross road of business and ICT. The picture below is a snapshot of the members of the Center for Organization and Information that are responsible for the MBI program. Please find more information about this course on MBI

 

 

 

 

Required Subjects

 

Advanced research methods

The aim of the course Get acquainted with and get understanding of several important multivariate statistical techniques . Successively the following subjects will be discussed:
fundamental statistical concepts/elementary probability topics
correlation and regression analysis|
analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA, multi-way ANOVA, ANCOVA, repeated measures, multivariate ANOVA )
discriminant analysis
factor analysis (principal component analysis)
cluster analysis

 

e-Business

In this course we will focus on the relationships between organizations. Cooperation between organizations has become a strategic activity and takes many forms. Firms intensify their outsourcing activities, integrate supply chains, invest in customer and supplier relationship management, form strategic alliances and partnerships, etcetera. How can IT help organizations to achieve win-win relationships with their environment, considering the increase in interdependencies and interorganizational coordination problems? In this course this challenge is addressed from both a managerial and technological perspective. In practice, students will jointly perform a scientific research project to apply different theoretical and empirical approaches to the subject.

 

Development of Knowledge Systems

Acquisition of knowledge about the analysis and development of knowledge systems from a knowledge management point of view. The role of knowledge systems is studied in the context of capturing the organization's knowledge assets and improving the overall quality of decision-making. We will discuss the application of artificial intelligence techniques, and more specifically knowledge based systems, in information processing and information systems design. In particular, we will study rule-based systems, logic for AI, classification systems, reasoning based on uncertain knowledge and fuzzy systems. A knowledge system can be seen as a cooperative agent that has access to various aspects of a particular domain of discourse and is able to reason and communicate with users about these aspects. We'll therefore pay special attention to the interaction with the system. Students will analyze, develop and implement three major components of a knowledge system, i.e., the domain ontology, the reasoning mechanism, and the interface to the user. For that, students have to translate relevant knowledge elicited from experts into a machine-readable model and they will study and implement different types of user-agent interaction.


Animation

The title Animation is used here as a moniker for a course on rich Web experiences. Animation in its basic form, i.e. the illusion of movement through a rapid display of images, was the beginning of a lively Web being composed of more than illustrated text alone. Nowadays, animation technologies like Flash and Silverlight are subtly incorporated in a whole range of experiential applications, which do not necessarily show many moving objects. Animation techniques (in the broad sense of the word) provide smooth transitions, tweens, high quality multimedia, complex mouse-over effects, interactive graphics, and a reliable display in a Web browser.

In this way, the term animation has come to cover a broad field of techniques and research lines in computer science, social sciences and arts. Therefore, some demarcation is needed. This course will focus on the theme animation and interactive content, thus emphasizing animation in combination with conveying information, visualization, story telling, user experience and usability. Starting with classic cartoon animation it fans out to a variety of related domains, like virtual worlds, advertisement, rich media, cultural heritage and museums. The main objective is a thorough overview by means of reading publications and integrating knowledge in papers of good quality.

Enterprise architecture

Enterprise architecture (EA) deals with the texts, models and rules of the complete information infrastructure of an enterprise.
This course is intended for master students in Information Science, i.e. Business Informatics (for which the course is mandatory) and Content and Knowledge Engineering; and also for masters in Informatics. The course focuses on the modeling of enterprise architectures and enterprise functions. It also gives an overview of the underlying scientific theories regarding a number of architectural themes, such as different types of architectures, architectural frameworks, governance, rationalization of the product portfolio etc. Since the content of this course is obviously influenced to a great extent by developments in the IT-market, we will pay a great deal of attention to this aspect by letting the students work on practical real-world cases from industry, (semi-) governmental organizations, large IT-companies and so on (see course form below).

 

Method engineering

The learning objectives of this course are:
Providing of insight and skills into the systematic description, explanation and evaluation of all aspects of the methodology of ICT systems;
Contribution to the collection of knowledge on method engineering;
Be able to work and adapt methods, techniques and tools in various applications of Method Engineering.
The overall theme of the course is Software Product Management, the discipline and business process which governs a product from its inception to the market/customer delivery in order to generate biggest possible value to the business. Software product management is complex: there are many stakeholders, many responsibilities and fastly changing requirements. We will deal with the internal structures of methods and techniques for four particular areas within this domain, namely: requirements management, release planning, product roadmapping and portfolio planning.

Target group: Master students in Business Informatics, Content and Knowledge Engineering, Computer Science, and Cognitive Artificial Intelligence. Student enrolling a master in february are advised to follow the course in their second year. This course is especially meant for those who are interested in a career as researcher, consultant, developer, or (project) manager.

 

Business process management

The Enterprise Lab course contains two parallel tracks:

- practical business simulation
- theoretical seminars

During the practical business simulation (on Thursday mornings) students will learn how to work with Cordys (business process management) software, and participate in workshops at the business laboratory of Hogeschool Utrecht. They will create and implement a simple supply chain solution (SCS) case in Cordys BCP, and let the business partners collaborate with each other according to predefined public processes using web services. Monitoring of business operations concludes the business case.

During the seminars, theoretical elaboration will take place on the issues related to the implementation of Business Process Management Systems. Research approaches to validate a BPMS implementation methodology will be presented and defended, accordingly the research will be done, after which an analysis and conclusions will be provided in written format.

 

Supply chain management

Nearly everything that is going on in organizations can be considered as processes or streams. Logistics and logistic management is about handling these streams effectively. In search of progress and excellence, firms are not only urged to minimize their stocks and inputs, but also their personnel and financial flows. in this logistics course, fundamentals and applications of the external supply chain are addressed. Topics including optimization models like linear and mixed integer programming, demand forecasting, scheduling, and applications of strategic, tactical and operational supply chain planning and inventory management.

 

Kennismanagement

For a long time companies relied on the production factors: labor, capital and (raw) material, but today the main production factor is knowledge (P. Drucker). Organizations, such as corporate enterprises, non-profits, educational institutions and governmental agencies, face the continual struggle to transform vast amounts of data, information and content into usable and reusable knowledge. Globalization and technological developments force organizations into a continuous process of change and adaptation.

Alvin Toffler and Peter Drucker already noticed the consequences in the 80's of the previous century. They mention the rise of the information based or knowledge based organization. This new type of organizations mainly consists of so-called 'knowledge workers' that largely depend on knowledge to do their work. Knowledge workers work rather autonomously hence a different organization structure is required that typically consist of less management layers. The growing awareness of knowledge as a distinct factor of production and the need for a new management approach has led to a new field of study and practice - knowledge management.

Another driver has been the development of so called 'knowledge systems'. However, results of implementing such systems are not always as expected. Systems are not always aligned with work practices, people need to know how to trust and interpret information provided, providing information or sharing knowledge is not automatically a part of everybody's job routine.

Knowledge management is about organizing, development and use of knowledge in such a way that it directly contributes to the competitive edge of a company. In the Knowledge Management course we will study themes like 'KM models', 'knowledge management strategy', 'organizational learning', 'networks and communities', 'ICT support for knowledge processes', 'intellectual capital'.

 

Business informatics Summer school

This year there is the opportunity to follow one summer school. The summer school concerns in depth e-business and will go to Bled (EB) from 14-17 June 2009. The number of participants from Utrecht University will be limited to 5, and will be based on an intake by the lecturers. Possibility to request for participation is until 2 February 2009.

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