Developing professionalism in new IT graduates? Who needs it?

A new graduate may require a period of ‘acclimatisation’ through a process of ‘developing their professionalism’ to fit into their work environment. The e-Skills UK Technology Counts Insights 2010 report suggests that 110,500 new entrants a year are required to fill IT & Telecoms professional job roles, with 20,800 coming from education (predominantly graduate level and higher). However, 43% of recruiters were reporting a lack of suitable candidates for IT & Telecoms posts where growing importance will be placed on relationship management, business process analysis and design, project and programme management. IT & Telecoms professionals are increasingly expected to be multi-skilled, with sophisticated business and interpersonal skills as well as technical competence. As the report also says: ‘UK growth will continue to be primarily in high-value roles with an increasing need for customer and business-oriented skills as well as sophisticated technical competencies.’ The diverse needs and requirements of the IT sector, as specified by various employer groups and professional bodies including BCS, IET, eSkills, the CBI and the SFIA Foundation, are discussed. According to the CBI, ‘62% of entrants to the IT sector need to draw on managerial and professional business skills almost immediately.’ For organisations to succeed, their IT graduate recruits must supplement their IT skills with managerial and professional business skills. Well considered CPD will ensure that recent graduates can enhance their ‘academic’ skills with the necessary work-based skills for the benefit of both themselves and their new employer. The focus of the improvement will balance the student-centred needs for development and the engaging employer’s commercial needs

Growing your own graduates: opportunities and challenges for flexible higher education in the new funding environment

At a time when the price of an undergraduate degree in England is set to become the highest in OECD countries, many concerns have been expressed about the affordability of a university qualification, especially for those students currently already under-represented in HE. Much has been made of the availability of tuition fee loans which, for the first time, will be extended to those studying part time at a minimum intensity of 25%. This is potentially good news for part time providers who have had to raise fee levels to cover the reduction in direct teaching grant but as yet, there is considerable uncertainty over part time students’ willingness to become indebted, however generous the terms of the loan. Furthermore, the restriction of loans to those who register for a qualification and the lack of loan availability for those with equivalent or higher level qualifications means that modular study for the purposes of lifelong learning becomes much less feasible However, evidence at the Open University of an unexpected increase in students aged 18-25 suggests that younger people are giving serious consideration to ‘learning while they are earning’ and setting themselves on a path towards genuine lifelong learning. In response to this – and to employer demands for much more flexible routes to qualifications - the Centre for Inclusion and Curriculum and the Business Development Unit have been exploring options to enable the delivery of such schemes at scale. This paper reflects on progress to date and the advantages such schemes offer for employers, students, HEIs and funding bodies. Nevertheless, there are also significant challenges in developing such provision, not least in the rigidified structures of university systems which are predicated on what might be considered an outdated conception of HE and funding mechanisms which effectively restrict access to first-time, undergraduate students following traditional routes through HE

The Institute of Coding Accreditation Standard: Exploring the Use of a Professional Skills Framework to Address the UK Skills Gap

Computing comprises a broad spectrum of subjects and specialisms, with a rich variety of undergraduate courses (including Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, Information Technology and Software Engineering) offered by universities worldwide. This breadth presents challenges for employers considering employing computing graduates and hence desiring to know both the topics studied and the skills/competencies accumulated by graduates to be able to make appropriate job offers. Small to medium enterprises (SMEs) may not have the resources to provide graduate training programmes, and therefore need ‘workready’ graduates. This paper explores and evaluates the feasibility of benchmarking students’ achievements against an industry-led skills framework, Skills for the Information Age (SFIA), to distinguish between what graduates know, have done or are competent in. The approach taken was evolutionary prototyping, informed by expert review. The work generated an accreditation standard that could be implemented or used as a model to enhance an existing accreditation standard. In contrast to academic approaches to competency-based education, or abstract notions of generic skills, this work focused on defining an output standard expressed in terms of employer needs and expectations captured in the SFIA skills framework. We show how a course meeting the proposed standard would satisfy the UK benchmarks for an undergraduate computing degree. By badging SFIA knowledge and competencies, such a course would enhance its learning outcomes, offering clarity for employers and career benefits to students

Control over Charge Separation by Imine Structural Isomerization in Covalent Organic Frameworks with Implications on CO₂ Photoreduction

Two-dimensional covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are an emerging class of photocatalytic materials for solar energy conversion. In this work, we report a pair of structurally isomeric COFs with reversed imine bond directions, which leads to drastic differences in their physical properties, photophysical behaviors, and photocatalytic CO2 reduction performance after incorporating a Re(bpy)(CO)3Cl molecular catalyst through bipyridyl units on the COF backbone (Re-COF). Using the combination of ultrafast spectroscopy and theory, we attributed these differences to the polarized nature of the imine bond that imparts a preferential direction to intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) upon photoexcitation, where the bipyridyl unit acts as an electron acceptor in the forward imine case (f-COF) and as an electron donor in the reverse imine case (r-COF). These interactions ultimately lead the Re-f-COF isomer to function as an efficient CO2 reduction photocatalyst, while the Re-r-COF isomer shows minimal photocatalytic activity. These findings not only reveal the essential role linker chemistry plays in COF photophysical and photocatalytic properties but also offer a unique opportunity to design photosensitizers that can selectively direct charges