Teaching AIS and MIS with Microsoft Visio?
November 30, 2005 message from David Fordham, James Madison University [fordhadr@JMU.EDU] I used to use Visio extensively in my teaching, both as a presentation aid and as a tool for teaching students the rudiments of flowcharting and data flow diagramming in my systems courses. I even had the students download and use the freeware version for their own charting assignments. However, for the last several years (especially now that flowcharting is making a noticeable comeback in the accounting firms), I’ve been using the “draw” toolbar in all the Microsoft Office applications: Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc. This toolbar comes with Office, and applies to all Office components. The default installation of office loads it. To get to it, you right click on a blank area in any existing toolbar, and check the “draw” box. The draw toolbar has flowchart shapes, the DFD shapes, connectors, arrows, curves, text provisions, and allows formatting of the objects (colors, patterns, textures, borders,