Crafting a Degree, Empowering Students, Securing a Nation: The Creation of a Modern Cyber Security Degree for the 21st Century

To create the next generation of skilled university graduates that would help in filling the national need for cybersecurity, digital forensics, and mobile computing professionals, a team of minority/under-represented graduate students, the University Upward Bound Program (a federally funded program and part of the U.S. Department of Education; one of 967 programs nationwide) staff, and faculty from the Computer Science (CS) department got together and proposed a focused 10-week long funded summer camp for two local high schools with the following objectives: 1. Provide graduate students to instruct in the areas of` mobile application development, forensics and cyber Security 2. Provide CS one-on-one mentors for students while conducting their work-based learning experience in Computer Science 3. Assign hands-on interdisciplinary projects that emphasize the importance of STEM fields when using and developing software applications. 4. Promote and develop soft skills among participants including leadership, communications skills, and teamwork. 5. The proposal was funded, and the summer camps were conducted in the summer of 2019 with participation of more than 40 students from two local high schools. 6. The paper will present our efforts in each of the above areas: 7. The criteria/application/selection of high school student based on interest and needs. 8. The criteria/specification for purchased equipment 9. The selection and hiring of graduate students as instructors who can not only teach, but also serve as role models for the incoming students. 10. The development of course material into two parts: foundational material required by everyone, and specialized material where the student selects his/her area of interest. Presented results will show how the summer-camps benefited the students through the focused instruction given by graduate students, and how the students gained valuable knowledge and problem-solving skills in certain STEM fields. 11. The mentorship provided by the CS faculty to the instructors and the students through scheduled visits and agile approach for the software projects assigned. 12. The development of soft skills: how the planned social activities helped in honing the students software skills and allowed them to interact with people from all over the world (through faculty mentorship, conference attendance, project presentation), and prepared them academically and socially for their upcoming university experience. By presenting our study, we hope that other institutions who are considering summer camps can benefit from our experience by adopting best practices while avoiding pitfall

Growing Computer Science and Information Technology Education in K-12: Industry Demand and Ecosystem Support

Demand for IT skills has grown dramatically in the last decade. Companies have realized that they need more people to fill roles in their IT departments, and modern life increasingly relies on being able to navigate digital environments and use digital tools. Many school districts have responded to these demands by attempting to increase their offerings of computer science and information technology coursework. In this paper, we describe one region’s effort to support K-12 schools in increasing digital skills for all students and the pipeline of IT professionals. We describe three approaches taken by three school districts to respond to these efforts in collaboration with local industry and other institutions. One school district partnered closely with local higher education institutions to offer early college classes, another focused on providing robust computer science courses of their own to high school students, and the third focused on developing broad digital skills especially at the grade school level (K-8). We argue that the collaboration maturation of efforts in the region allowed school districts to expand computer science offerings more easily and to use regional partnerships to increase the likelihood of being successful with their efforts

Connected and Automated Vehicles Emerging Technology Skills Gap Analysis

This report is focused on connected and automated vehicles (CAV) and will analyze the current and emerging technology workforce in southeast Michigan. It examines occupations that are critical in developing CAV by analyzing data on the workforce's employment trends, local demand, entry requirements, and regional specialties.This report was published by the Workforce Intelligence Network with support by the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation

Skilling up for CRM: qualifications for CRM professionals in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The 4th industrial revolution (4IR) describes a series of innovations in artificial intelligence, ubiquitous internet connectivity, and robotics, along with the subsequent disruption to the means of production. The impact of 4IR on industry reveals a construct called Industry 4.0. Higher education, too, is called to transform to respond to the disruption of 4IR, to meet the needs of industry, and to maximize human flourishing. Education 4.0 describes 4IR’s impact or predicted impact or intended impact on higher education, including prescriptions for HE’s transformation to realize these challenges. Industry 4.0 requires a highly skilled workforce, and a 4IR world raises questions about skills portability, durability, and lifespan. Every vertical within industry will be impacted by 4IR and such impact will manifest in needs for diverse employees possessing distinct competencies. Customer relationship management (CRM) describes the use of information systems to implement a customer-centric strategy and to practice relationship marketing (RM). Salesforce, a market leading CRM vendor, proposes its products alone will generate 9 million new jobs and $1.6 trillion in new revenues for Salesforce customers by 2024. Despite the strong market for CRM skills, a recent paper in a prominent IS journal claims higher education is not preparing students for CRM careers. In order to supply the CRM domain with skilled workers, it is imperative that higher education develop curricula oriented toward the CRM professional. Assessing skills needed for specific industry roles has long been an important task in IS pedagogy, but we did not find a paper in our literature review that explored the Salesforce administrator role. In this paper, we report the background, methodology, and results of a content analysis of Salesforce Administrator job postings retrieved from popular job sites. We further report the results of semi-structured interviews with industry experts, which served to validate, revise, and extend the content analysis framework. Our resulting skills framework serves as a foundation for CRM curriculum development and our resulting analysis incorporates elements of Education 4.0 to provide a roadmap for educating students to be successful with CRM in a 4IR world

DISRUPTIVE BUSSINESS MODEL FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

A business model is a plan for the successful operation of a business, identifying the source of revenue, the intended customers, value proposition, key resources, activities, and financing. It describes how organizations create, deliver and capture value. The recent developments in information and communications technology (ICT) disrupted most business models in different industries. The higher education industry is no exception, where it witnessed enormous integration of information and communications technologies. E-learning in higher education has made a tremendous shift in students’ life and raised the expectations of higher education service quality. The main objective of this thesis to develop a disruptive business model with a value proposition that leverages the recent development in the ICT sector and helps reduce educational costs, optimize operations of educational institutions, and provide an increased number of students with access to high-quality educational services. The research work provides a comprehensive literature review on using ICT in higher education and utilizes a well know business model canvas – designed in 2010 by business theorist Osterwalder – to develop a disruptive model of higher education. Two surveys have been conducted in the empirical part of this study. The first one investigates the current application of online technologies in higher education, targeting students, faculty, and parents. The second survey evaluates the students’ reactions to e-learning courses that they had taken. The results of the studies align with the value and technologies proposed by the business model. Hence, the two surveys’ findings prove the validity and the unique potential of the proposed business model. The study reveals that the implementation of the new model might face substantial resistance to change because many teachers, parents, and even students do not perceive online learning as a valid alternative to traditional education. Therefore, institutions of higher education will need to conduct information campaigns to convince students, parents, and employers of the validity of the new model

Using Simulation to Leverage Digital Transformation of SMEs: A European Perspective

Digital transformation is one of the main challenges that SMEs face nowadays. Nevertheless, to a great extent, they lack the necessary capacities and skills to introduce and apply technologies that can support digitalization. As a design science approach, researchers from different European countries have carried out the collaborative research project VOIL to collect and scientifically develop resources and tools to support SMEs in building digital skills. In the context of this project, a tool is developed to assess the digital maturity of SMEs. Moreover, a learning journey based on the use of simulators is proposed together with a minimal viable prototype integrating all developed tools to provide a comprehensive learning environment. Lessons learned from the application of said learning online environment in experimental settings are also shared. The project results contribute to the research that has been carried out within the scope of life long learning, proposing the aggregation of pedagogical strategies that allow self-guided learning in the workplace