Latin American perspectives to internationalize undergraduate information technology education

The computing education community expects modern curricular guidelines for information technology (IT) undergraduate degree programs by 2017. The authors of this work focus on eliciting and analyzing Latin American academic and industry perspectives on IT undergraduate education. The objective is to ensure that the IT curricular framework in the IT2017 report articulates the relationship between academic preparation and the work environment of IT graduates in light of current technological and educational trends in Latin America and elsewhere. Activities focus on soliciting and analyzing survey data collected from institutions and consortia in IT education and IT professional and educational societies in Latin America; these activities also include garnering the expertise of the authors. Findings show that IT degree programs are making progress in bridging the academic-industry gap, but more work remains

Multinational perspectives on information technology from academia and industry

As the term \u27information technology\u27 has many meanings for various stakeholders and continues to evolve, this work presents a comprehensive approach for developing curriculum guidelines for rigorous, high quality, bachelor\u27s degree programs in information technology (IT) to prepare successful graduates for a future global technological society. The aim is to address three research questions in the context of IT concerning (1) the educational frameworks relevant for academics and students of IT, (2) the pathways into IT programs, and (3) graduates\u27 preparation for meeting future technologies. The analysis of current trends comes from survey data of IT faculty members and professional IT industry leaders. With these analyses, the IT Model Curricula of CC2005, IT2008, IT2017, extensive literature review, and the multinational insights of the authors into the status of IT, this paper presents a comprehensive overview and discussion of future directions of global IT education toward 2025

Industry and faculty surveys call for increased collaboration to prepare information technology graduates

Academic and industry collaborations can help improve computing curricula and student learning experiences. Such collaborations are formally encouraged by accreditation standards. Through the auspices of ACM and IEEE-CS, the IT2017 task group is updating curriculum guidelines for information technology undergraduate degree programs, similar to the regular updates for other computing disciplines. The task group surveyed curriculum preferences of both faculty and industry. The authors, with the group\u27s cooperation, compare US faculty and US industry preferences in mathematics, IT knowledge areas, and student workplace skill sets. Faculty and industry share common ground, which supports optimism about their productive collaboration, but are also distinct enough to justify the effort of actively coordinating with each other

A Semester Long Classroom Course Mimicking a Software Company and a New Hire Experience for Computer Science Students Preparing to Enter the Software Industry

Students in a Computer Science degree programs must learn to code before they can be taught Software Engineering skills. This core skill set is how to program and consists of the constructs of various languages, how to create short programs or applications, independent assignments, and arrive at solutions that utilize the skills being covered in the language for that course (Chatley & Field, 2017). As an upperclassman, students will often be allowed to apply these skills in newer ways and have the opportunity to work on longer, more involved assignments although frequently still independent or in small groups of two to three students. Once these students graduate and enter the software industry they will find that most companies follow specific development methodologies from one of the many forms of Agile through Waterfall. All while working in large groups or teams where each developer is responsible for specific pieces of the functionality, participating in design meetings and code reviews, as well as using code versioning systems, such as git, a program management system, such as Jira, all in a very collaborative environment. This study will develop a course that will allow students to apply these skills in a more realistic setting while remaining on-campus and monitoring the students’ beliefs on their preparedness for the world outside of the computer science building

An information technology competency model and curriculum

This paper addresses the progress made by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS) in developing a competency model and curricular guidelines for four-year degree programs in information technology. The authors are members of an international task group representative of academic institutions, industry, and professional organizations. The task group is to develop a competency model, called IT2017, for information technology education within two years based on earlier guidelines and other perspectives. This paper provides a brief background of the project, some activities undertaken, the progress made, and expectations for future developments. IT2017 seeks to produce a futuristic model of academic excellence so information technology graduates will be prepared for new technological challenges in a global economy

Review and Analysis of the Digital Health Sector and Skills for Scotland : A Report by the Digital Health and Care Institute in Partnership with Skills Development Scotland

This report has been produced by the Digital Health and Care Institute (DHI), as commissioned by Skills Development Scotland to investigate and analyse the Digital Health sector and its skills issues in Scotland. The digital health sector is characterised as emerging from the conjunction of health and care services, mobile health and ICT, and it is one of the fastest growing economic sectors globally, hungry for skilled staff. In this report 'digital health' encompasses companies that produce, provide and service digital health solutions on the one hand, and health and care service providers that utilize and implement digital healthcare solutions and tools in the delivery of their services on the other. As the health and care sector catches up with the other economic sectors in digitization, the need for personnel in digital health and care both in the private and the public sectors increases exponentially. Digital health is a diverse, interdisciplinary sector, something that is reflected in the skills required in the field, ranging from higher level computing, such as software development and software engineering to project management and business-related skills. There is a specific lack of personnel who are proficient in ICT but also have an understanding of health and care. However, while the sector is finding it hard to find suitably skilled graduates, and to offer them competitive salaries, the unemployment among ICT graduates is higher than in other disciplines. Furthermore, currently there are only a handful of courses, and these only on post-graduate level, offering digital health education in Scotland. The biggest single factor restricting economic growth in the sector is the lack of suitably skilled personnel. Digital health is going to face severe challenges in the near future, if the disparity between what the education and training provision offers and what the digital health sector needs is not bridged. Currently, companies are using all available means to attract skilled employees, ranging from recruiting from other sectors to offering in-house training, internships, modern apprenticeships and industrial placements to students and graduates. In order for Scotland to capitalize on the expanding digital health market, it is vital to ensure that there is a sufficient supply of skilled workers entering into the sector. Based on the research discussed in this report the DHI have made several recommendations that focus on: * Reviewing the existing education and training provision with digital health in mind; * involving digital health employees more closely in the development of the curricula in computing and health and care; and * Raising the profile of digital health sector in Scotland

New Hampshire University Research and Industry Plan: A Roadmap for Collaboration and Innovation

This University Research and Industry plan for New Hampshire is focused on accelerating innovation-led development in the state by partnering academia’s strengths with the state’s substantial base of existing and emerging advanced industries. These advanced industries are defined by their deep investment and connections to research and development and the high-quality jobs they generate across production, new product development and administrative positions involving skills in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)

Preparing for the future of Technological Progress: A study regarding the effective strategies for employee professional development

This article examines the changing job market and the need for companies to implement proactive measures to maintain competitiveness. It analyzes current and forecasted required skills in respect to the jobs of the future, such as IT&C, cybersecurity, robotics and AI. The article also emphasizes the importance of internship programs as a means for young individuals to gain valuable experience, develop skills, and explore career options. The most effective actions identified for enhancing competitiveness and employability include creating leadership development and modular training programs, conducting workforce planning exercises, and launching internal academy programs (Marr, Business Trends in Practice, 2021). Finally, the paper proposes a proactive guideline, arguing for the need of reskilling, vertical continuous training and digital transformation, aimed at equipping both companies and employees/future workers with the required skills and competencies to navigate the multifaceted dynamics of the labor market, including digital transformation and other related phenomena

A Shifting Research Agenda: Historically Black Colleges and Universities Must Prepare Students for Careers in Computing, Informatics, and Engineering

This paper describes the founding principles upon which historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU) are built and examines their role in the high-tech economy. It examines and discusses the diversity issues that have led many to posit that HBCUs should embrace computing, informatics, and engineering as focal areas, and partner with Silicon Valley tech companies to ensure their graduates have the skills necessary for gainful employment. The Howard-West partnership of Howard University (an HBCU) with Google LLC and an enterprise architecture framework are presented as conceptual examples of how colleges and universities such as Howard University, can work together and with industry to introduce students to computing, regardless of major, to prepare them for the modern workforce. A conceptual framework is presented, guided by the outcomes of the social cognitive career theory. The theoretical orientation of this proposed work focuses on the intersection between individual, environmental, and behavioral attributes, and describes formative and summative evaluation criteria in support of the research and educational goals. HBCUs can be better served by prioritizing the very areas in which they are currently “overproducing” graduates—computing, informatics, and engineering. The proposed model can be adopted, modified, and integrated by HBCUs, and other universities and colleges, that suffer from a lack of disciplinary integration in their computing programs. The potential outcome of the work would be to attract and retain students to computing majors, which could have an impact on the technology workforce

An experience of collaboration using a PaaS for the smarter university model

In this paper we continue our previous research on the development of the current model of higher education, which pointed out that the labor market is looking for people with competencies and skills reflecting a T-shape model. As a consequence, universities should include a wider mix of disciplines in the curricula of their courses. Hence, to overcome existing criticisms and to provide some suggestions on how to enhance universities' performances, we thought of education as a process with inputs, outputs, and relevant dependencies. We called such a university a “smarter university” in which knowledge is a common heritage of teachers and students. In our research the smarter university model is based on a smart-city-like model, due to the fact that next generation networks and relevant services are going to be more and more integrated with existing infrastructure and information management systems. Thus, it is mandatory that smart solutions are the most prominent assets of modern university environments to improve the effectiveness of higher education. In this paper, we report the experimental results from a specific case study of collaboration between industry and university, which could be used as a refer- ence for the definition of patterns to be applied in the redesign of the current education systems, even though the experiment refers to a technological application scenario