Information technology team projects in higher education: an international viewpoint

It is common to find final or near final year undergraduate Information Technology students undertaking a substantial development project; a project where the students have the opportunity to be fully involved in the analysis, design, and development of an information technology service or product. This involvement has been catalyzed and prepared for during their previous studies where the students have been told and shown how to develop similar systems. It is the belief that only through this ‘real’ project do they get the chance to experience something similar to what is expected of them when they embark on their chosen profession; that is, as an information technology professional. The high value of ‘near real life’ educational experience is recognized by many universities across the globe. The aim of this paper is to present examples from three countries - Australia, United Kingdom and South Africa, of the delivery of these team, capstone or industrial experience projects; their curricula and management processes. Academics from institutions in each of the countries share experiences, challenges and pitfalls encountered during the delivery of these information technology projects within their institutions. An overview of each institution’s strategies is provided and highlights specific issues such as the selection of projects, allocation of teams to projects, legal requirements, assessment methods, challenges and benefits. The pedagogies presented here are not exhaustive; however, the three institutions do have in common the implementation of a combination of constructivism with a community of practice approach in delivering the project unit. The three universities recognize the need for industrial experience and learning of applied skills, and therefore make these projects a compulsory part of the curriculum. The projects tend to be real life business problems which are solved over a period of two semesters, and in the case of Cape Town it could be two consecutive years of two semesters each. These projects tend to involve practical development (for example databases and web sites). The process of project-to-team allocation is generally similar in all cases. Despite their differences, team work related problems are quite similar in all three cases presented, and seem to appear as a result of team work complexity, and the number of stakeholders involved. The intention of this paper is not to propose solutions to these problems (as these would be context dependent), but to draw the attention to the main problem categories for similar schemes, these are; • project selection, • management of students, • management of academic staff, • student team motivation, • equality and diversity, • passengers, and • assessment. Furthermore, it is not the intention of the authors to portray one approach as better than another, however, the approaches are representative of how team projects are being delivered across the globe, and in particular, in the contributing institutions. It is hoped that the assimilation and dissemination of information regarding the various approaches presented will nurture further discussion, and open communication across the globe with the view to enhancing the teaching and learning experience of such projects

What should students learn in the digital world?

[EN] The rapid changes in the working environment and society as a whole as a result of digitalisation demands a new and changed competence profile. Specialist requirements are changing, and extracurricular requirements are of growing significance. Curriculum development at higher education institutions should take note of this change in order to ensure that higher education graduates are ready for professional life, and to reinforce personal development in the digital world. What should students learn in the digital world? This question invites us to consider further, from a digital perspective, the competency orientation in higher education. This article will demonstrate approaches to competency-oriented curriculum development, to consider the digital transformation in skills profiles and to render this process more dynamic. This article is based on experiences at a higher education institution that has encountered the challenges of digital transformation.Harth, T.; Dellmann, F. (2017). What should students learn in the digital world?. En Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 485-493. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD17.2017.526748549

Offshore education : offshore education in the wider context of internationalisation and ICT: experiences and examples from Dutch higher education

This report presents a study on offshore education conducted by a consortium of Dutch higher education researchers and commissioned by the Digital University (DU). The study explored the extent to which Dutch higher education institutions are involved in offering their educational services abroad (offshore education). After thoroughly embedding offshore education in the wider contexts of internationalisation and ICT policies, the study particularly explores the practical experiences with a number of real-life offshore activities of Dutch higher education. As a warm-up to this report, a few interesting cases are briefly touched upon below

Connecting Mathematics and Mathematics Education

This open access book features a selection of articles written by Erich Ch. Wittmann between 1984 to 2019, which shows how the “design science conception” has been continuously developed over a number of decades. The articles not only describe this conception in general terms, but also demonstrate various substantial learning environments that serve as typical examples. In terms of teacher education, the book provides clear information on how to combine (well-understood) mathematics and methods courses to benefit of teachers. The role of mathematics in mathematics education is often explicitly and implicitly reduced to the delivery of subject matter that then has to be selected and made palpable for students using methods imported from psychology, sociology, educational research and related disciplines. While these fields have made significant contributions to mathematics education in recent decades, it cannot be ignored that mathematics itself, if well understood, provides essential knowledge for teaching mathematics beyond the pure delivery of subject matter. For this purpose, mathematics has to be conceived of as an organism that is deeply rooted in elementary operations of the human mind, which can be seamlessly developed to higher and higher levels so that the full richness of problems of various degrees of difficulty, and different means of representation, problem-solving strategies, and forms of proof can be used in ways that are appropriate for the respective level. This view of mathematics is essential for designing learning environments and curricula, for conducting empirical studies on truly mathematical processes and also for implementing the findings of mathematics education in teacher education, where it is crucial to take systemic constraints into account

Filling the gap between education and industry: evidence-based methods for introducing undergraduate students to HPC

Educational institutions provide in most cases basic theoretical background covering several computational science topics, however High Performance Computing (HPC) and Parallel and Distributed Computing (PDC) markets require specialized technical profiles. Even the most skilled students are often not prepared to face production HPC applications of thousands of lines nor complex computational frameworks from other disciplines nor heterogeneous multinode machines accessed by hundreds of users. In this paper, we offer an educational package for filling this gap. Leveraging the 4-years experience of the Student Cluster Competition, we present our educational journey together with the lessons learned and the outcomes of our methodology. We show how, in a time span of a semester and an affordable budget, a university can implement an educational package preparing pupils for starting competitive professional careers. Our findings also highlight that 78% of the students exposed to our methods remain within the HPC high-education, research or industry.The authors of this paper and the participants in the SCC have been supported by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme [FP7/2007-2013] and Horizon 2020 under the Mont-Blanc projects, grant agreements n. 288777, 610402 and 671697; the HPC Advisory Council; the Facultat d’Informàtica de Barcelona – Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya; Arm Ltd.; Cavium Inc.; E4 Computer Engineering. We warmly thank Luna Backes Drault for her unconditioned dedication to the SCC cause in the early days and the pizzeria 7bello in Frankfurt for always having a table and a smile for us.SiPreprin

Supplementing textbooks with computer-based resources in the primary EFL-classroom

Most reputable educational studies today show that there will never be a direct connection between the use of computers and learning outcomes because learning is mediated through the learning environment and the computer is only one element of that environment. Nevertheless, since most children in Germany have access to a home computer and the internet, the school as an egalitarian institute is obligated to offer pupils a level playing field. Providing some kind of access to computers is, therefore, school's responsibility to the disadvantaged and the underprivileged, irrespective of the reputed pedagogical value of such practice. As with any learning method, the use of computers in the primary English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom has to be practiced systematically. Until such use is anchored in the curriculum, it is essential that the teacher makes it a habit for the class to frequent the computer lab at regular intervals. Without frequent use, young learners will practically have to relearn the same computer program every time they use it. Under the tight time constraints prevailing in the EFL primary classroom and the school computer lab, and as most primary EFL teachers are generalists (non-specialists) who teach several subjects, the best possible solution would be to have the same computer program incorporated into other subjects as well, such as German or General Studies (Sachfachunterricht), similarly to content and language integrated learning (CLIL). Teachers should choose computer-assisted activities which reflect and promote pupils’ existing abilities rather than neglect or marginalize them. The suggested activity here is the production of talking books – audio-visual multimedia slideshows and photomontages. It requires pupils to use the listening and speaking skills of a storyteller rather than the reading and writing skills needed for authoring paper storybooks. Pupils whose capacity to express themselves in the foreign language is limited can achieve considerable satisfaction by using pictures to fill lexical and structural gaps. Desktop publishing software and multimedia authoring programs allow young learners of EFL to combine spoken, written, visual and graphic materials to create talking books, thus successfully expressing information and ideas which lie beyond their current level of English competence. The exposure to multi-sensory stimuli during the work with computers gives pupils more physical pegs to associate information with. Evidence suggests that this non-verbal support leads to increased learning and more effective remembering of information

Unlocking the power of generative AI models and systems such asGPT-4 and ChatGPT for higher education

Generative AI technologies, such as large language models, have the potential to revolutionize much of our higher education teaching and learning. ChatGPT is an impressive, easy-to-use, publicly accessible system demonstrating the power of large language models such as GPT-4. Other compa- rable generative models are available for text processing, images, audio, video, and other outputs and we expect a massive further performance increase, integration in larger software systems, and diffusion in the coming years. This technological development triggers substantial uncertainty and change in university-level teaching and learning. Students ask questions like: How can ChatGPT or other artificial intelligence tools support me? Am I allowed to use ChatGPT for a seminar or final paper, or is that cheating? How exactly do I use ChatGPT best? Are there other ways to access models such as GPT-4? Given that such tools are here to stay, what skills should I acquire, and what is obsolete? Lecturers ask similar questions from a different perspective: What skills should I teach? How can I test students competencies rather than their ability to prompt generative AI models? How can I use ChatGPT and other systems based on generative AI to increase my efficiency or even improve my students learning experience and outcomes? Even if the current discussion revolves around ChatGPT and GPT-4, these are only the forerunners of what we can expect from future generative AI-based models and tools. So even if you think ChatGPT is not yet technically mature, it is worth looking into its impact on higher education. This is where this whitepaper comes in. It looks at ChatGPT as a contemporary example of a conversational user interface that leverages large language models. The whitepaper looks at ChatGPT from the perspective of students and lecturers. It focuses on everyday areas of higher education: teaching courses, learning for an exam, crafting seminar papers and theses, and assessing students learning outcomes and performance. For this purpose, we consider the chances and concrete application possibilities, the limits and risks of ChatGPT, and the underlying large language models. This serves two purposes: First, we aim to provide concrete examples and guidance for individual students and lecturers to find their way of dealing with ChatGPT and similar tools. Second, this whitepaper shall inform the more extensive organizational sensemaking processes on embracing and enclosing large language models or related tools in higher education. We wrote this whitepaper based on our experience in information systems, computer science, management, and sociology. We have hands-on experience in using generative AI tools. As professors, postdocs, doctoral candidates, and students, we constantly innovate our teaching and learning. Fully embracing the chances and challenges of generative AI requires adding further perspectives from scholars in various other disciplines (focusing on didactics of higher education and legal aspects), university administrations, and broader student groups. Overall, we have a positive picture of generative AI models and tools such as GPT-4 and ChatGPT. As always, there is light and dark, and change is difficult. However, if we issue clear guidelines on the part of the universities, faculties, and individual lecturers, and if lecturers and students use such systems efficiently and responsibly, our higher education system may improve. We see a greatchance for that if we embrace and manage the change appropriately