This module explicitly focuses on significant elements required for the achievement of the STAFFORDSHIRE GRADUATE ATTRIBUTES:
- Work-ready and employable
- Communication skills
- Understanding of global issues and their place in the global economy
- Ability to carry out inquiry-based learning and critical analysis
- Skills of problem solving and creation of opportunities
- Technologically, digitally and information literate
Professionalism and Career Planning assessed in assignment item 1
-Professional, legal, social issues and ethics
-Professional Bodies
-Reflective writing revisited
-Entrepreneurship, Enterprise and Employability in the ICT Industry - what's out there?
-Lifelong Learning
Group work and Collaboration tools to be assessed in assignment item 1, Milestone 1.
-Group work Theories
-Collaboration tools
Useful Mathematical Concepts (to be assessed in Assignment Item 1, Milestone 1 and Assignment item 2, milestones 1 and 2)
-Propositional Logic, matrices and set theory
-Functions - an introduction to low order polynomial, logarithmic, -exponential, and trigonometric functions. Solving simple equations involving these functions.
-Probability and Descriptive Statistics
-Introduction to principles of computational modelling.

Management of ICT Systems: assessed in assignment item 2
- Organising For Systems Management
- Staffing For Systems Management
- Customer Service
- Ethics, Legislation and Outsourcing
- Global Issues
- Comparison to ITIL Processes
- Availability, resilience and reliability
- Performance and Tuning
- Change Management
- Risk Management
- Problem Management
- Storage Management
- Network Management
- Configuration Management
- Capacity Planning
- Strategic Security
- Business Continuity and disaster Recovery
- Facilities Management
- Software Licensing and FAST compliance
- Integrating Systems Management Disciplines
- Contemporary Issues

An on-line Module Work Book will be provided which will guide students through a series of tasks which will give structure to independent academic research, work based investigation and practical work based learning.

Independent Academic Research
Students will be expected to undertake around 50 hours of independent academic study during the course of the module. This will be guided by a series of academic tasks such as producing research reports, working through case studies etc and will require access to academic resources.

Work-based Component
Students will need to spend circa 50 hours over the course of the module undertaking their work-based tasks. This will include investigation of how aspects of the academic learning apply to the workplace and development of new skills. Students will have access to a workplace based mentor while it is not prescriptive, Mentors will usually devote around 5 hours in total to their mentees on a one to one basis or in groups if possible. The time will be used to support the mentees in their completion of set tasks.

Group work and Collaboration
Students will work remotely in study groups of three or four using a cloud based collaborative development environment (CDE) to produce a group presentation which will delivered using suitable technologies.

Academic contact time will be used to provide academic support for individual student learning on an ad-hoc basis via the VLE. There will typically be 8 scheduled 30 minute sessions for each study group (4 academic contact hours)

2 hours of Academic Contact time will be used for four individual 30 minute formative reviews. Where necessary, reviews will be conducted virtually using appropriate tools. Employer Feedback Forms will be completed by the work-based mentor and Self-assessment forms will be completed by the student. These will inform the reviews.

Open source software and collaborative environments including:

Gmail and Google Drive accounts for collaborative sharing of group work documentation

Skype account (or similar) for conference video call presentations

None

A course work assignment comprising 2 milestones weighted at 30% and assessing learning outcomes 4, 5 and 6
- Milestone 1 - A group presentation including statistical analyses relating to careers in ICT
-Milestone 2 -Development of a career action plan (minimum 1500 words) with related career evaluation paperwork
A course work assignment comprising 3 milestones weighted at 70% addressing learning outcomes 1-4

- Milestone 1 - A report (minimum 1000 words) including analysis of requirements and the proposal and justification (through use of suitable analytical modelling techniques) for the acquisition or development of an ICT resource as part of business strategy (25%) which will assess Learning Outcomes 1 and 4.

- Milestone 2 ¿A report (minimum 1000 words) including the proposal and justification (through use of suitable analytical modelling techniques) of measures to secure, maintain and protect ICT system resources (25%) which will assess Learning Outcomes 2 and 4 .

- Milestone 3 - research report (minimum 2000 words) discussing contemporary issues in ICT systems acquisition, management, control or audit relevant to the student's workplace and advising on future strategy (including global issues) (50%) which will assess Learning Outcome 4.

Essential Text:

IT Systems Management, Scheisser R (2009), Prentice Hall, ISBN 0137025068

The following are not essential texts but will provide useful background reading:
A Dictionary Of It Service Managment: Terms, Acronyms And Abbreviations, Hanna, MacFarlane, Rance and Lillicrap (2008) itSMF, ISBN0955124573

It Service Management Based On ITIL V3: A Pocket Guide, Van Bon, J (2008), Van HAren publishing, ISBN 908753102
Beyond reflective practice : new approaches to professional lifelong learning, Bradbury, Helen. (2010) Routledge, ISBN: 0415467934
Foundation Mathematics, K. A. Stroud & D. J. Book, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, ISBN-10: 0230579078, ISBN-13: 978-0230579071
Foundation Maths, A. Croft and R. Davidson, Prentice Hall (2006), ISBN: 0131979213