Building Basic Competences for Culturally Diverse ICT Professionals

Part 1: Key Competencies for Educating ICT ProfessionalsInternational audienceThe ICT profession is extremely international, and so are ICT students. University students in one study group in Europe may represent ten or twenty nationalities with varied cultural and educational backgrounds. Selection of appropriate teaching methods for diverse students is challenging. This paper describes cognitive differences in multinational study groups, and explores ways to overcome some of the differences through offering online programming courses to support classroom instruction. Currently, online programming tools are widely used in schools and outside formal institutions. This paper shows that they can be efficient also when building professional competencies

Enhancing Innovation Potential through Local Capacity Building in Education

Part 1: Society, Social Responsibility, Ethics and ICTInternational audienceGlobal technology education is largely dominated by Western universities. Students from developing countries face an enormous challenge when moving from their local education system into the competitive international education market. Their local knowledge gets lost in a foreign education system where the students are required to acquire a new set of skills. This paper presents a survey among international technology students that highlights the differences. Moreover, the paper explores the situation from the developing country perspective, and brings forth a proposal for strengthening the education capacities in the developing countries particularly in the fields of ICTs and mobile technologies. Strengthening local knowledge building would allow innovations based on local needs and potentials