This course is a primer on information and technology in business. It’s intended for those who wish to increase their IT skills either for personal or business use, to enhance their ability to collaborate with IT professionals, or who wish to pursue IT certifications. At the end of this course, you’ll be able to “talk tech” and you’ll have a solid grasp of the fundamentals of information technology.
This course begins by introducing the information and Big Data life cycles, information technology (hardware, software, storage, and services), and information control (security, confidentiality and privacy, availability, and processing integrity) using a single unifying framework. This framework is used in information systems courses for business majors at the undergraduate level. It includes all of the topics covered in an introductory university course.
The first module in this course introduces the framework and explains how economic forces, such as compliance, the business model, and risk, govern the role of information and technology in a business environment. Each of the remaining ten modules focuses on one of the building blocks of the framework:
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Information and Big Data life cycles
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Computer hardware
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Open source software
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Operating systems
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File and database storage
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Kernel and web services
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Data security
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Confidentiality & privacy
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Data and systems availability
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Data entry and processing integrity
Course image by Jeroen Bennink, some rights reserved under license CC BY 2.0