Horizons

The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, some­times pok­ing you with a sharp stick called ‘truth’.

The word pro­fes­sor comes from the Latin pro­fes­sor, which derives from pro­fess, mean­ing “declared pub­licly”. This, in turn, comes from the verb prof­i­teri, formed from pro- (“before”) + fateri (“con­fess”). From an ety­mo­log­i­cal stand­point, then, a pro­fes­sor is some­one who pro­fesses—who pub­licly declares some­thing.

By speak­ing openly, a pro­fes­sor aims to con­vey a mes­sage to a lis­ten­ing audi­ence. And when com­mu­ni­ca­tion takes place, that pub­lic dec­la­ra­tion should lead to some kind of trans­for­ma­tion in the lis­ten­ers—by con­sol­i­dat­ing ideas, ques­tion­ing cer­tain­ties, spark­ing novel con­nec­tions, inspir­ing fresh thoughts, ...

Ide­ally, a pro­fes­sor opens new hori­zons for their stu­dents. Suc­cess is not guar­an­teed... but the belief in the pos­si­bil­ity of trans­for­ma­tion must always be present.

Over the years, I have taught a vari­ety of courses.

Cur­rently, at the under­grad­u­ate level, I am instruc­tor in charge of the fol­low­ing course.

Fundamentals of Information Systems

This manda­tory course serves as stu­dents’ first con­tact with the field of Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems (IS). It is taught to fresh­men (First year, First semes­ter) in the pro­gram Licen­ciatura in Engi­neer­ing and Man­age­ment of Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems. It focuses on the con­cepts used in the dis­course and rea­son­ing asso­ci­ated with orga­ni­za­tional ini­tia­tives and activ­i­ties involv­ing the adop­tion and use of Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Tech­nol­ogy (IST).

The learn­ing out­comes of this course are the fol­low­ing:

• Explain the cen­tral con­cepts of the Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems area, namely, sys­tem, infor­ma­tion and infor­ma­tion sys­tem

• Explain the dif­fer­ences between types of IT Appli­ca­tions

• Indi­cate the roles played by IT Appli­ca­tions from a vari­ety of con­cep­tual frame­works

• Rep­re­sent infor­ma­tion sys­tems

• Char­ac­ter­ize the pro­fes­sional pro­file of Engi­neer­ing and Man­age­ment of Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems

• Exer­cise trans­ver­sal skills (active lis­ten­ing, team­work, ana­lyt­i­cal think­ing, and sys­temic think­ing)

The main com­po­nents of the syl­labus are:

1. Sys­tems, Sys­tem con­cept, Appli­ca­tions of the sys­tem con­cept, Sys­temic inter­ven­tions, Con­cep­tual mod­els for sys­temic stud­ies

2. Orga­ni­za­tions, Sys­temic char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of an Orga­ni­za­tion, Seman­tic analy­sis

3. Infor­ma­tion, Con­cep­tual frame­works of dif­fer­ent con­cep­tions of Infor­ma­tion, Semi­otic analy­sis

4. Infor­ma­tion Sys­tem, Inter­pre­ta­tions for the IS expres­sion

5. Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy, Rel­e­vant IT focus objects in Orga­ni­za­tions

6. Evo­lu­tion of IT and types of IT Appli­ca­tions, Cri­te­ria for clas­si­fi­ca­tion of IT Appli­ca­tions, Com­bi­na­tion of types of IT Appli­ca­tions, Role of IT Appli­ca­tions in sup­port­ing per­sonal, orga­ni­za­tional, and social activ­i­ties

7. Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of IS, Lan­guages and tech­niques for the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of IS, UML*

8. Dis­ci­plines in the area of Com­put­ing, Pro­fes­sional and com­pe­tency frame­works in Com­put­ing

9. Pro­fes­sional func­tions and com­pe­ten­cies of the Engi­neer and Man­ager of IS

10. Edu­ca­tion in Engi­neer­ing and Man­age­ment of IS

At the grad­u­ate level, I am instruc­tor in charge of the fol­low­ing courses.

Management of Information Systems

This is a manda­tory course in both the Mas­ter’s Pro­gram in Engi­neer­ing and Man­age­ment of Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and in the Mas­ter’s Pro­gram in Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems. The man­a­ge­nent of IS is explored as both a pro­fes­sional field and a research domain. The course places par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the role of the Man­ager of Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems (Chief Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer) and on the processes involved in man­ag­ing IS. It draws on estab­lished frame­works to sup­port these processes, aim­ing to enhance an orga­ni­za­tions’ IS capa­bil­ity.

The learn­ing out­comes guid­ing the teach­ing of this course are the fol­low­ing:

• Dis­cuss what is the Man­age­ment of IS of an orga­ni­za­tion, its impor­tance and orga­ni­za­tional inser­tion

• Dis­cuss the foun­da­tions, pur­poses, lim­its, prob­lems and results of Man­age­ment of IS related processes

• Apply appro­pri­ate approaches, meth­ods and tech­niques to the man­age­ment of an orga­ni­za­tion’s infor­ma­tion assets

• Act in the IST strat­egy process

• Describe the fun­da­men­tal skills and char­ac­ter­is­tics of man­agers of IS

• Exer­cise trans­ver­sal skills (team­work, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and crit­i­cal think­ing)

The syl­labus asso­ci­ated to the course is as fol­lows:

1. Fun­da­men­tals of the Man­age­ment of IS, Gov­er­nance of IS and Man­age­ment of IS

2. IST Strat­egy, IS Capa­bil­ity

3. IST Strat­egy Process, Change, Meth­ods

4. Align­ment, Inno­va­tion, Impact

5. IST Port­fo­lio Man­age­ment

6. Invest­ments in IST, Ben­e­fits, Risks

7. IST Ser­vices, IS Func­tion, Inter­ven­tion Activ­i­ties, Out­sourc­ing

8. Chief Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer (CIO)

9. Frame­works for the Man­age­ment of IS (IT-CMF, PRAXIS, COBIT, ITIL, oth­ers)

10. Man­age­ment of IS in Dig­i­tal Native Orga­ni­za­tions, Sin­gu­lar­ity

Information Systems Security Management

This elec­tive is offered to stu­dents in both the Mas­ter’s Pro­gram in Engi­neer­ing and Man­age­ment of Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and the Mas­ter’s Pro­gram in Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems. It focuses on the topic of IS Secu­rity man­age­ment, adopt­ing a mul­ti­di­men­sional and inte­grated approach that con­sid­ers tech­no­log­i­cal, human, orga­ni­za­tional and social fac­tors.

Stu­dents that com­plete the course should sat­isfy the fol­low­ing learn­ing out­comes:

• Explain the fun­da­men­tal con­cepts of IS Secu­rity, the frame­work for the IS Secu­rity Man­age­ment activ­ity, and the fac­tors that cur­rently influ­ence this activ­ity

• Dis­cuss in an artic­u­lated man­ner the tech­ni­cal, for­mal, infor­mal, and reg­u­la­tory dimen­sions of IS Secu­rity

• Eval­u­ate an orga­ni­za­tion’s infor­ma­tion sys­tem from the per­spec­tive of secu­rity

• Rec­om­mend IS Secu­rity con­trols to apply in an orga­ni­za­tion

• Struc­ture the IS Secu­rity Func­tion of an orga­ni­za­tion

• Develop intro­duc­tory research works in IS Secu­rity

• Exer­cise trans­ver­sal skills (com­mu­ni­ca­tion, active lis­ten­ing, argu­men­ta­tion, ana­lyt­i­cal think­ing, and syn­thetic think­ing)

In what con­cerns the syl­labus of this course, here are the main top­ics cov­ered:

1. Fun­da­men­tals: Con­text, Def­i­n­i­tions, IS Secu­rity Dimen­sions, Fun­da­men­tal Con­cepts, Con­trols, Milieu

2. Tech­ni­cal Aspects: Tech­ni­cal Con­trols, Tech­ni­cal Spec­i­fi­ca­tion Mod­els

3. For­mal Aspects: For­mal Con­trols, Risk and Risk Man­age­ment, Eval­u­a­tion, Plan­ning, Design, Imple­men­ta­tion, Implan­ta­tion, Vision, Strat­egy, Archi­tec­ture, Poli­cies, Pro­ce­dures, Busi­ness Con­ti­nu­ity and Dis­as­ter Recov­ery, Inci­dent Man­age­ment, Secu­rity and Usabil­ity

4. Infor­mal Aspects: Infor­mal Con­trols, Behav­ioral Secu­rity, Gov­er­nance, Cul­ture

5. Reg­u­la­tory Aspects: Reg­u­la­tory Con­trols, Stan­dards, Leg­is­la­tion and Reg­u­la­tion, Com­pli­ance, Ethics, Pri­vacy and Anonymity, Hack­ing and Crack­ing, Social Engi­neer­ing, Cyber­crime, Dig­i­tal Foren­sics, Infor­ma­tion War­fare

6. IS Secu­rity Func­tion: Oper­a­tion, Pro­gram, Struc­ture, Chief Infor­ma­tion Secu­rity Offi­cer, Pro­fes­sional Pro­files, Out­sourc­ing, Assur­ance and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion

7. Prin­ci­ples for IS Secu­rity Man­age­ment

8. Research in IS Secu­rity

Information Systems Auditing

This elec­tive course is offered to stu­dents in both the Mas­ter’s Pro­gram in Engi­neer­ing and Man­age­ment of Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and the Mas­ter’s Pro­gram in Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems. It focuses on the topic of IS Audit­ing accross sev­eral eval­u­a­tion domains, includ­ing IS gov­er­nance, the IS Func­tion, IS effi­cacy, IS effi­ciency, and IS integrity.

A key fea­ture of the teach­ing-learn­ing process is the empha­sis on major stan­dards in the IS field, as well as on risk mit­i­ga­tion and infor­ma­tion sys­tems con­trol.

Given the scope of IS Audit­ing domains cov­ered, the course builds heav­ily on knowl­edge acquired by stu­dents in other cur­ric­u­lar units within the Pro­gram, as well as on stu­dents’ under­grad­u­ate train­ing—par­it­u­larly in the areas of IT and IS.

At the end of the course, a stu­dent should demon­strate the fol­low­ing learn­ing out­comes:

• Explain the fun­da­men­tal con­cepts of IS Audit­ing, the use­ful­ness of the IS Audit­ing activ­ity, and the con­di­tion­ing fac­tors of this activ­ity

• Dis­cuss the domains of IS Audit­ing

• Dis­cuss the work of an IS audi­tor

• Eval­u­ate the IS of an orga­ni­za­tion

• Struc­ture the IS Audit­ing func­tion of an orga­ni­za­tion

• Develop intro­duc­tory research works in IS Audit­ing

• Exer­cise trans­ver­sal skills (com­mu­ni­ca­tion, active lis­ten­ing, argu­men­ta­tion, ana­lyt­i­cal think­ing, and crit­i­cal think­ing)

The top­ics cov­ered in the syl­labus are the fol­low­ing:

1. Risk, Risk in IST

2. Con­trol, Inter­nal con­trol, Con­trol of IST, Con­trols

3. Eval­u­a­tion, Review and Audit, Audit Types, Con­tin­u­ous Audit­ing

4. Pur­pose and Value of Audit­ing, Assur­ance and Com­pli­ance, Envi­ron­ment of IS Audit­ing, Trends in IS Audit­ing

5. Work of an IS Audi­tor, Audi­tor Pro­file, Pro­fes­sion­al­ism, Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in IS Audit­ing

6. Evi­dence in IS Audit­ing

7. Audit Plan, Process of IS Audit­ing

8. IS Audit­ing Stan­dards, Tech­niques and Tools

9. Eval­u­a­tion of IS Gov­er­nance

10. Eval­u­a­tion of IS Func­tion

11. Eval­u­a­tion of IS Effi­cacy

12. Eval­u­a­tion of IS Effi­ciency

13. Eval­u­a­tion of IS Integrity

14. Orga­ni­za­tion and Direc­tion of the IS Audit­ing Func­tion

15. Research in IS Audit­ing

I also par­tic­i­pate in teach­ing the Top­ics in Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Tech­nol­ogy Research course, a sem­i­nar of the Doc­toral Pro­gram in Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Tech­nol­ogy. Here are some of the top­ics I addressed in pre­vi­ous edi­tions of the Pro­gram: “Mea­sure­ment in Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems Research”, “Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems Secu­rity, Audit­ing and Man­age­ment: A Jour­ney through Seven Works”, and “Dis­ci­plines, Pro­fes­sional Frame­works and Pro­fes­sional Pro­files”.

In the past, I have also been involved in teach­ing other courses.

At the under­grad­u­ate level, the courses I taught included: Fun­da­men­tals of Com­puter Pro­gram­ming (instruc­tor in charge for 13 aca­d­e­mic years), Struc­tured Pro­gram­ming II (instruc­tor in charge for two aca­d­e­mic years), Infor­mat­ics (instruc­tor in charge), Struc­tured Pro­gram­ming (instruc­tor in charge for three aca­d­e­mic years), Pro­gram­ming Tech­niques (instruc­tor in charge), Com­puter Pro­gram­ming I, Com­puter Pro­gram­ming II, Intro­duc­tion to Pro­gram­ming (for three aca­d­e­mic years), Pro­gram­ming Lan­guages (for two aca­d­e­mic years), Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems I, Intro­duc­tion to Infor­mat­ics, Pro­gram­ming and Infor­mat­ics, and IT Appli­ca­tions.

These courses were part of Pro­grams such as the Licen­ciatura in Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Tech­nol­ogy, Licen­ciatura in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Engi­neer­ing, Licen­ciatura in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, Licen­ciatura in Man­age­ment Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems, Licen­ciatura in Civil Engi­neer­ing, Licen­ciatura in Indus­trial Elec­tron­ics Engi­neer­ing, Licen­ciatura in Tech­no­log­i­cal Physics, Licen­ciatura in Physics and Chem­istry Teach­ing, Licen­ciatura in Mate­ri­als Engi­neer­ing, Licen­ciatura in Bio­log­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, Licen­ciatura in Applied Physics, Licen­ciatura in Math­e­mat­ics Teach­ing, and Licen­ciatura in Man­age­ment.

At the grad­u­ate level, I taught sev­eral courses, includ­ing Top­ics in Sys­tems The­ory, Infor­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Sys­tems (instruc­tor in charge for six aca­d­e­mic years), Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems Secu­rity and Audit­ing (instruc­tor in charge for two aca­d­e­mic years), and Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems Secu­rity (for four aca­d­e­mic years, two of them as instruc­tor in charge). With the excep­tion of Top­ics in Sys­tems The­ory (taught in the Mas­ter’s Pro­gram in Aero­space Engi­neer­ing) and Infor­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Sys­tems (taught in the Mas­ter’s Pro­grams in Indus­trial Engi­neer­ing and in Sys­tems Engi­neer­ing), all other courses were taught in Mas­ter’s Pro­grams related to Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems.

In addi­tion to teach­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties in under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate pro­grams, I have also been involved in deliv­er­ing spe­cial­ized courses. Below is an overview of the courses, train­ing pro­gram, tar­get entity, loca­tions, and dates.

• Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems Plan­ning Work­shop, spe­cial­ized train­ing pro­gram for autarchi­cal staff, Pub­lic Man­age­ment and Admin­is­tra­tion Insti­tute
  (IGAP), Porto (Por­tu­gal), 2001.

• Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy in Orga­ni­za­tions: Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems
  Suc­cess, spe­cial­ized train­ing pro­gram for IT pro­fes­sion­als, NBS—
  Qimonda, Vila do Conde (Por­tu­gal), 2008.

• Infor­ma­tion Secu­rity, spe­cial­ized train­ing pro­gram on Infor­ma­tion
  Soci­ety for stu­dents of Por­tuguese Mil­i­tary Acad­emy, Uni­ver­sity of
  Minho, Guimarães (Por­tu­gal), 2010.

• Infor­ma­tion Secu­rity Man­age­ment, spe­cial­ized train­ing pro­gram on IT
  Secu­rity, IFE—Inter­na­tional Fac­ulty for Exec­u­tives, Lis­bon
  (Por­tu­gal), 2010.

• Infor­ma­tion Secu­rity, spe­cial­ized train­ing pro­gram on Infor­ma­tion
  Soci­ety for stu­dents of Por­tuguese Mil­i­tary Acad­emy, Uni­ver­sity of
  Minho, Guimarães (Por­tu­gal), 2011.

• Archi­tec­tures and Man­age­ment of Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems, spe­cial­ized train­ing pro­gram PASP PALOP-TL (Pro­ject to Assist in the Improve­ment of the Qual­ity and Prox­im­ity of PALOP and Timor-Leste Pub­lic Ser­vices), Uni­ver­sity of
  Minho and Camões, I.P., Guimarães (Por­tu­gal), 2016.

• Opera­cional­iza­tion of Dig­i­tal Pub­lic Ser­vices, spe­cial­ized train­ing pro­gram PASP PALOP-TL (Pro­ject to Assist in the Improve­ment of the Qual­ity and
  Prox­im­ity of PALOP and Timor-Leste Pub­lic Ser­vices), Uni­ver­sity of
  Minho and Camões, I.P., Guimarães (Por­tu­gal), 2016.

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