Mode of deliveryOn Campus
AQF Level7
Duration3 Years
Full-Time
LocationSydney NSW
Melbourne VIC
Course Fees See Fees
Upcoming Intake Date 3 March 2025, 28 April 2025, 7 July 2025, 1 September 2025, 10 November 2025
The Bachelor of Information Systems (BIS) program is designed to provide students with comprehensive knowledge and applied hand-on skills across a broad range of key areas of information technology and business systems. The course prepares graduates to enter the exciting and ever-evolving fields of information systems and information technology. The BIS features opportunities to study in contemporary and crucial areas of cyber security, artificial intelligence and data analytics.
The course covers design thinking, agile systems development methodologies, and various aspects of enterprise systems so that graduates enter the workforce ready to work in modern organisations.
The course is characterised by an end of program capstone unit that provides students with the valuable experience of working on a real-world project drawing together the knowledge and skills acquired over the entire BIS course. Importantly, the course has been designed to meet the Australian Computer Society (ACS) requirements for graduate employment in areas of information technology and information systems.
Graduates of the Bachelor of Information Systems Course will have demonstrated achievement of the following Course Learning Outcomes and be able to:
CLO 1: Demonstrate a broad and coherent body of knowledge in Information technology and information systems.
CLO 2: Critically apply cognitive, analytical and technical skills to design, implement, evaluate and operate Information Systems to address organisations’ problems.
CLO 3: Communicate effectively with technical and non-technical audiences within and across organisations, using written and oral communication tools.
CLO 4: Demonstrate the capacity to plan, problem solve and work on information systems individually and collaboratively in diverse teams, in a socially responsible manner.
The Bachelor of Information Systems aims to provide graduates to the Professional, Scientific and Technical Services industry, particularly Computer Systems Designs and Related Services.
Bachelor of Information Systems graduates may seek employment in a number of information systems and information technology related areas including:
Cyber Security Analyst
Database Administrator
Data Analyst
ICT Business Analyst
IS Project Manager
Software Tester
Systems Analyst
Technical Support Officer
The course is 3 years full-time comprising of 24 units (240 Credit Points) where a full-time student undertakes 4 units of study per study period.
International students on a student visa are required to study full time (i.e. must complete a minimum of 1.0 Equivalent Full Time Study Load (EFTSL) of study per year). At Apex, 1.0 EFTSL is defined as 80 credit points a year (8 units where each unit is 10 credit points).
The course can be undertaken part-time for domestic students only. The course is 6 years part-time comprising of 24 units (240 Credit Points).
A study period means the intake semester (or intake Summer School) and each subsequent semester.
Full-time students normally undertake four (4) units (subjects) of study during a semester. There are three (3) hours of face-to-face teaching and nine (9) hours of independent learning per unit, per week (total of twelve (12) hours face-to-face teaching per week, and thirty-six (36) hours of independent study per week).
The Bachelor of Information Systems consists of 24 units. In the course there are 16 core units and 8 unrestricted electives. For the electives students may select from any undergraduate unit offered by Apex Australia Higher Education or students may select specific groups of units from specific ‘streams’ that prepare them for a specific career with the broad field of information systems (IS).
The structure of the BIS is as follows (the information listed under each unit name can be as a dropdown as it currently exists on the website):
This unit provides an overview of Information Systems (IS) and its role in organisations and contribution to business decision-making processes. The unit explains how technology is used to develop systems that effectively support, enable, and add value to business processes. An understanding of IS, is important to the work of managers because it serves as a bridge between management and technology in business operations.
Mastering both business and technology skills and knowledge, creates job opportunities as individuals with these abilities can better contribute to shaping a company’s strategy and value operations. Upon completion of this unit, students will be able to understand IS concepts, analyse and evaluate issues contained in BIS case studies, appreciate, and analyse the impact of IS on business decision-making, and utilise IS in creating business value and competitive advantages.
This unit introduces students to the basics of programming. Students will learn the basics of programming using Python including procedural and object-oriented programming approaches.
This will include designing and creating programmes in a high-level language; using data structures and algorithms; using libraries; coding style; debugging; and testing. They will also be able to adapt relevant programming styles, standards, and practices in a problem-solving context.
In this unit, students will learn about fundamental networking topologies and protocols and understand the importance of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) and Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) models, protocol stacks and their operation in computer networks.
As part of the practical activity, students will employ a range of network tools to test, map and configure a typical network. By the end of this unit of study the student will be able to identify and understand how to address network infrastructure requirements in a business environment.
Managing operations and technology is critical for every business that is concerned with delivering value to its customers. This unit introduces students to the principles, tools, quantitative models, and strategies used in the management of operations and technology and examines key issues facing both service and manufacturing organisations.
In this unit, students develop basic understanding of product and service design, technology-enabled innovations, process design, operations planning and control, quality, performance, and IT service delivery. It equips students with the basic skills and techniques to analyse operations in a digitalised world and improve them.
In addition, it explores the concepts of information technology enabled innovations and IT services and equips students with an ability to evaluate, implement and manage enabling technologies in business operations.
This unit aims to provide students with a basic understanding of the principles and practical skills necessary for the application of statistics in the business context. The unit emphasises the use of statistical methods to draw inferences from sample data to inform decision-making across business generally and more particularly in the areas of economics, accountancy, finance, and marketing.
Topics covered in the unit include descriptive statistics, random variables and their distributions, sampling distributions, point and interval estimation of parameters, hypothesis testing, and regression models.
Students are also introduced to the ever-increasing importance of Big Data for the operation and decision-making purposes of businesses as well ethical and social implications of Big Data. Students learn to organise and present data as well as solve statistical problems using Excel.
This unit complements the study of other units and provides a foundation for further study of statistical methods.
Digital information systems produce vast amounts of data, and appropriate management of this data is essential for decision making and value-adding. This unit introduces the fundamental concepts in database design and development, covering the conceptual level and physical level of database management systems (DBMS).
It will cover different categories of DBMS, data modelling and design, query languages, and practical challenges involved with deploying database management systems such as database performance tuning, transaction management, internet connectivity, and security.
In this unit, students develop skills in systems analysis and design. The unit will provide an overview of the Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC), associated techniques and methodologies. SDLC is the process applied by organisations when designing and developing information systems.
The unit will look at two types of SDLC, specifically waterfall and iterative (agile). The unit explains how to develop system requirements (elicitation and specification), using techniques, tools, and perspectives essential for information systems analysts.
The unit will require students to apply the tools and techniques of system analysis and design to solve a real industry business problem.
Cloud computing allows the provision of computing services such as software, storage, analytics, and intelligence over the internet. It enables service users to trade fixed computing expenses for usage-based variable expenditures, to benefit from reduced service costs due to economies of scale, increase agility and flexibility, and to reduce maintenance costs.
This unit starts by discussing the business case of cloud computing, including benefits, challenges, business models, and types. Thereafter, it dives deep into the underlying technology of cloud computing systems and covers an overview of virtualisation, containers, and virtual networks. It also covers selected topics in automation and orchestration, which are essential for cloud computing systems. Students experience implementing and deploying basic cloud applications and learn about cloud computing programming paradigms.
This unit also introduces emerging technologies closely connected to cloud computing, including Edge Computing, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and Software Defined Networks (SDN), and discusses the opportunities and challenges for cloud providers and customers.
This unit provides an introduction to managing information systems projects. The unit will provide an overview of the project management process. It will explain how project management techniques, tools and processes are used by organisations to ensure projects can be delivered to stakeholders within the agreed scope, cost, and time (the Iron Triangle).
The unit will also provide an overview of agile project management (but this will not be a complete agile course). The unit will require students to apply the tools and techniques of project management to solve a real industry project management problem.
This unit deals with understanding data and how to analyse and present data in real-world scenarios. The unit gives students the opportunity to investigate and reflect on the data held about consumers and businesses by big data companies of the world such as Facebook and Google. Students also learn to assess datasets which have been collected by governments, including the purpose and quality of data.
Data is not objective and neutral; students will learn to evaluate the integrity of datasets, understanding that this is the basis for good practice in data analytics. Students will also learn to use and critically assess a range of data analytics and visualisation tools to collaboratively interpret and articulate data including assessing the ethical and social dimensions of data collected by companies.
This unit focuses on the ethical considerations in the field of Information & Communications Technology (ICT). It covers various philosophical theories of ethics and their relationship with current ethical and legal issues in information and communication technology. The unit also explores professional ethics in the IS field, including ethical issues in professional practice and their implications.
Finally, students will learn how to critically evaluate solutions to IS ethical problems and apply ethical theories and the Australian Computing Society (ACS) code of ethics to these problems. By the end of this unit, students will have a comprehensive understanding of ethical considerations in Information Systems and be equipped to navigate complex ethical scenarios in their professional careers.
This unit provides a broad understanding of information systems security principles and practices in today’s modern enterprises. It enables students to develop insights into cyber security attacks and the available security tools and defences to protect systems and users.
This unit also covers foundational concepts on how to devise cyber security plans as well as considerations for implementing them. Notably, students are introduced to the multidisciplinary challenges involved in cyber security, including technical, legal, organisational, and human aspects. Recent technological advances in enterprises and their potential impact on cyber security are also highlighted.
Enterprise systems, pervasive today in all types of firms (large, small, and medium sized), have a strategic role in supporting the key business processes and decision making. Building on the basic knowledge of information systems, business processes and data bases, this unit introduces the concepts, features and technologies of integrated enterprise systems including cloud-based enterprise systems and their extensions and equips students with the knowledge and skills required to evaluate their adoption and implementation.
It equips students with skills in the configuration of a simple enterprise system and demonstrate ability to perform transactions and reports relevant to key business processes such as order to cash, procure to pay and hire to fire through hands-on exploration of a packaged software tool.
It analyses the characteristic features, benefits, and challenges in the adoption of various extensions to enterprise systems – such as supply chain management, customer relationship management and business intelligence.
Information Systems (IS) professionals are expected to develop Information Technology (IT) solutions to reallife problems and require the knowledge they gained in different aspects of a course in information systems (e.g., systems analysis and design, databases, eBusiness technologies, programming etc.).
Design thinking helps IS professionals to think of an IS/IT solution from the perspectives of end users (e.g.,marketing assistants, production clerk, store clerk, payroll officer, mentally or physically disadvantaged users etc.).
On completion of this unit, students will learn how to develop an information system as a real business project involving design thinking, UML (Unified Modelling Language) use cases, sequence diagrams, object diagrams etc.
Students will be able to apply all the relevant knowledge gained throughout the first one and half years of the BIS (Business Information Systems) course. They will learn the importance of practical business skills, such as interpersonal communication, negotiations, conflict resolution and teamwork in the context of information systems development.
On completion of this unit, students will be able to develop an information system as a real business project involving IT project management techniques and tools (e.g. Jira), use cases for requirement analysis, agile development methodology, real development platforms (e.g., for Android App Development) and software development/version control (e.g. GitHub). Students will be able to apply all the relevant knowledge gained throughout the BIS (Business Information Systems) course to develop a real information system.
Students will use various IS analysis and design artefacts (e.g., IT project management techniques, Git, and scrum) to communicate and iterate their design in collaboration with real business users and IT professionals. They will learn the importance of practical business skills, such as interpersonal communication, contracts, and negotiation (learned in the previous years on this course) in the context of information systems development and delivery for a business.
Project sponsors (business organisations or academic staff) play an important role at all stages of the project. Each group project has a sponsor to specify the requirements, participate in various stages of the agile development, testing and acceptance of the information system developed as part of this capstone project.
Students will have regular access to the representative of the sponsor to obtain feedback on their understanding of the project functional and non-functional (e.g., security) requirements (and the context including all stakeholders), design approach, implementation, testing and evaluation.
Information Systems (IS) Strategy focuses on the issues, concepts, and practical application of IS strategy management. The strategic value is first examined and where IS strategic management fits within a 4th Industrial Revolution world, with the opportunities and challenges it brings.
The unit then introduces analytical frameworks and tools to evaluate these opportunities and challenges to assist in IS decision-making processes. Key issues in IS decision making include planned and emergent strategies, cyber security management and mitigation, privacy issues and IS governance
Finally, the unit addresses the role of IS leadership and communication in developing and deploying technology projects and portfolio management. Current trends and innovations in IS are also considered.
Students may select their eight (8) electives from a wide variety of units offered by the institute. Students may wish to select specific groups of units that prepare them for a specific career with the broad field of information systems (IS).
The following provides a description of three (3) different specific IS areas that students may be interested in. It highlights how specific sets of units combined to form a coherent stream of units targeting a specific area of IS. Undertaking electives from one (1) stream provides students with the opportunity to develop specialised skills, targeting specific occupational outcomes as graduates after they complete their degree at AHE.
Refer to the Bachelor of Information System Course Guide for more information about streams.
Accounting is the process of identifying, measuring, and communicating information about business activity for decision-making. This introductory unit provides an overview of business and the business environment and introduces the principles supporting the use of an accounting information system for business decision making in a socially responsible manner.
The unit covers the relevance and significance of fundamental accounting conventions and addresses applications of the accounting information system from the perspective of a user. On completion of this unit, students should have a clear understanding of the role of financial accounting within a business organisation and how financial accounting helps managers meet business objectives.
Students will be able to communicate with accounting professionals, understand the relevance of accounting information for informed decision-making by a wide range of potential users, and have the ability to analyse and interpret accounting information, including to analyse ethical and socially responsible business activity.
This unit equips students with basic business and academic writing and presentation skills necessary for completing their course of study and for entry-level work-ready business positions. The ability to develop documents relevant for business studies and write well-researched and solidly structured arguments in a clear, concise, and factual manner is emphasised.
Additionally, this unit explores the types of interpersonal and group communication skills relevant to the business workplace. This includes developing in students an understanding of and ability to utilise fundamentals of negotiation, including evidence-based arguments and utilise these skills for professional communication, presentations and well-written business relevant documents.
Ethical and socially responsible considerations in negotiation, business communication, and academic writing, including avoiding plagiarism and ensuring academic integrity such as correct citing and referencing practices, are threaded throughout the unit.
In today’s digital world, managing business processes is critical for improving performance, costs, decision making and customer orientation. This unit provides an in-depth understanding of the role of business process management in organisations and equip students with the skills required to manage the entire business process management life cycle from both the business as well as technology perspectives.
This unit helps students develop an ability and skills in process modelling, analysis, and improvement and a sound understanding of the implications, associated risks and change in the process redesign and improvements. Students develop hands-skills in using a popular industry-standard process management software tool.
This unit provides a broad overview of the data mining and business intelligence techniques used by organisations to gain insights into their customers and competitors. By doing so it may enable organisations to achieve a competitive advantage or improve their operations and better meet customer needs.
Students will be introduced to the tools and techniques of data mining and business intelligence thus enabling students to manipulate data and to view data in new ways. An important technique in data mining is presentation of the findings of data mining to stakeholders, so students will also learn the fundamentals of data visualisation and presentation.
This unit is a practical application of the tools, Python programming for developing new models and create visual dashboards for the users. Students will be acquainted with the knowledge of exploring the Weka machine learning open-source software and its associated libraries to discover patterns and develop expertise in machine learning. Probabilistic modelling, decision trees, classification, clustering, linear modelling, instance-based learning, and emerging topics in data mining are included in this subject. This subject also discusses the ethical conduct of data mining-related analyses and appraise the associated ethical, and social concerns.
DevOps has emerged as a new paradigm since most modern enterprise systems run continuously while they also require patching/updates and new features.
This unit introduces students to the concepts, practices, and technologies: Infrastructure as Code techniques, Infrastructure as a Service, Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipeline to deliver a new version of the software, how to use containers and container orchestration tools, open-source tools for automating deployment and containerised applications, and Microservices. Students will learn about DevOps best practices through case studies.
This unit introduces students to the fundamentals of artificial intelligence with an emphasis on machine learning and its applications in business. Several statistical algorithms for supervised and unsupervised learning such as regression, classification, decision trees, support vector machines, ensemble methods, clustering, and dimension reduction are covered in this course.
Students will build models capable of learning from data and apply them to recommender systems, Forecasting and other business applications.
This unit provides a practical introduction to mobile application development. It will discuss the various challenges and opportunities brought forward by mobile applications.
After that, students learn about mobile application design requirements, workflow basics, different development frameworks, and the required tools for developing, testing, and publishing Android applications.
This Cyber Security Risks and Control Strategies unit first discusses the fundamentals of cyber risk assessment and management techniques. The course then covers how to do a cyber security risk analysis of the specific assets and resources as well as the system. Upon completion of this subject, students will learn about the various risk assessment techniques and risk governance framework, as well as how to use them in real-world scenarios.
This unit, Developing Secure Software, covers the entire Safe Software Lifecycle by focusing on core ideas including trust, risks, mitigation, secure design patterns, and cryptography. Giving an overview of the process of designing secure software, outlining the coding procedures for putting secure software into practice from software design through its execution in actual situations.
The most prevalent coding errors that lead to vulnerabilities are discussed making extensive use of code snippets written in Python to demonstrate implementation issues.
This unit presents the foundations and core principles of marketing for businesses including an appreciation of marketing concepts utilised by businesses in Australian and globally. Emphasis is placed on creating customer value through different marketing activities and strategies, understanding the marketing mix within an environment of change, maximising utility of limited resources amidst industries in constant flux, and exploring new methodologies used by marketing practices.
Responsible and ethical marketing is crucial to sustainable and productive, long-term relationships between organisations, their customers, and stakeholders. This unit includes careful consideration of ethical and socially responsible practices within marketing activities. In addition, students will be introduced to current topics including the marketing process in an increasingly digital and global environment.
The unit equips students with the basic principles, fundamental practices and techniques required for effective organisational management. The principles of management presented are premised on four basic functions: planning, organising, influencing / leading and controlling. The unit overviews topics such as organisational culture, decision-making, motivation, managing diversity, and styles of personal management.
The topics are then expanded to include human behaviour in organisations with a specific focus on the workplace. The unit examines the ways in which an understanding of organisational behaviour is necessary to, and facilitates the management of, people at work.
Emphasis is placed on identifying internal and external environmental influences on organisational and individual performance and the role of the manager as well as developing an ethical and socially responsible managerial philosophy.
This unit introduces students to business research problems and the ways business research is conducted. Emphasis is placed on providing students with an understanding of the research process and a working knowledge of the methods and issues involved in conducting business research that allows better decisionmaking, both quantitative and qualitative.
Students will gain an understanding of relevant approaches and factors to consider when undertaking research to provide insights to solving a relevant business problem. Students should develop critical core competencies and skills required to undertake this research, including: defining research questions; setting appropriate research objectives; design that incorporates research objectives and budgetary constraints; secondary and primary data collection and instruments; sampling and analysis methods; and effective reporting of results; as well as the importance of ethical conduct in conducting research in business contexts.
The unit culminates in students writing a Research Proposal that requires students to identify, discuss and formulate a research problem, select and apply appropriate research approaches and methods of inquiry (both quantitative or qualitative).
The increasing dominance of technology companies in the Fortune 500 warrants critical analysis and dissection of “technology” and “tech” businesses. This unit examines the full scope of technology’s role and meaning in business contexts, from low-tech to high-tech, legacy to emerging, front-end to back-end, process innovation to intellectual property. Students will audit the range of technology used in a real-world business and assess its “digital maturity” according to different criteria.
This Unit will allow students to compare and contrast a variety of digital maturity models, as well as applications of technology in business to demonstrate the spectrum of digital maturity, as well as ethical and social implications across organisations and communities. This unit seeks to develop students’ organisational technology literacies and their capacity to work effectively and add value to businesses using digital transformation.
Students will study legal knowledge and related problem-solving skills appropriate to business through the three main sources of modern Australian law: The Common Law, Equity, and Statute Law. The unit also examines some of the problems that are created by the existence of nine distinct legislative, judicial and executive systems in Australia, and briefly touches on the mechanisms that exist to minimise these problems and to resolve conflicts between the systems. The unit includes understanding the common law of contract (including outsourcing) and various statutory provisions that have, over time, been introduced to modify those common law principles to promote fair trading and consumer protection. Students also learn the application of these concepts to the business environment, ethical and socially responsible perspectives including how the law applies to setting up a business, consumer law, competition law as well as consumer rights and responsibilities in Australia. In addition, various avenues of legal assistance to businesses in Australia are explored.
This unit introduces an understanding of economic concepts and contemporary economic issues for analyses and arguments in business decision-making. The unit focuses on the role of the market system and how resources are allocated; understanding consumers and businesses and how they interact; analysing and evaluating issues using economic theory in case studies; the relevance of economic theory to business decision-making, and examining the role of government in the economy. Microeconomics examines questions of price determination and resource allocation including ethical and social decisions and considers how firms take relative prices into account in their decision-making. Macroeconomics is the study of the economy in aggregate and considers the key determinants of the level of economic activity, such as the impact of interest rates, exchange rates, and the role impact of government policies on overall economic activity. The importance and interconnectedness of globalisation, international trade, and economic growth related to SMEs growth will be considered.
Accounting is the process of identifying, measuring and communicating information about business activity for decision-making by the users of the information. This unit continues on from BUS101Fundamentals of Accounting, and concentrates on the application of management accounting as part of business reporting and strategic management. Management accounting is a vital part of business decision-making and the basis of many internal business reports to management and to boards of directors. On completion of this Unit, students should have a clear understanding of the role of management accounting (and its limitations) and the way management accounting and reporting facilitates business decision-making, including analysing and interpreting management accounting data. Students will be able to understand issues such as budgeting, cost behaviour and capital investment decisions, to apply accounting knowledge to contemporary business problems and performance measurement.
This unit equips students to understand the significance of business models and explore the connections with business strategy, innovation and disruption management, digital technology and economic theory. Students have an opportunity to develop practical competencies and skills necessary for designing business models. A key learning objective of this unit is to give students a fuller understanding of the contemporary business environment, and in particular, how business modelling, competitive intelligence and scenario analyses align with the strategic planning and decision-making processes that influence the performance of either a ‘for-profit or ‘not-for-profit’ organisation. The Unit’s material also includes an analysis of how digital technology is shaping opportunities for “Startup businesses”, and challenging traditional Small & Medium Enterprises (SME) and Social Enterprises business models, in the context of a dynamic, competitive and technologically-involved competitive global environment. Students should be able to contribute to a creative, socially sustainable business model design and planning process for a business organisation.
Refer to the Bachelor of Information System Course Guide for more information about streams.
Further electives may be offered as new courses are developed.
Specific Course Admission Criteria for Bachelor of Information Systems: None
General Academic Admission Criteria applies. You are required to read the Admission Criteria and ensure you satisfy the requirements before you apply.
Admission CriteriaTuition Fee: AUD $49,440
Annual Indicative Fee: AUD $16,480
Semester Indicative Fee: AUD $8,240
Enrolment Fee: AUD $250
