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

Sabin, Mihaela C.

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University of New HampshireUniversity of New Hampshire Scholars' RepositoryApplied Engineering and Sciences Scholarship Applied Engineering and Sciences6-1-2016Industry and faculty surveys call for increasedcollaboration to prepare information technologygraduatesMihaela C. SabinUniversity of New Hampshire, Manchester, mihaela.sabin@unh.eduFollow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/unhmcis_facpubThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Applied Engineering and Sciences at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository.It has been accepted for inclusion in Applied Engineering and Sciences Scholarship by an authorized administrator of University of New HampshireScholars' Repository. For more information, please contact nicole.hentz@unh.edu.Recommended CitationMihaela Sabin, Paul Snow, and Barbara Viola, Industry and faculty surveys call for increased collaboration to prepare informationtechnology graduates, Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges 31 (2016), no. 6, 70–78.INDUSTRY AND FACULTY SURVEYS CALL FOR INCREASED COLLABORATION TO PREPARE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY GRADUATES  Mihaela Sabin University of New Hampshire 88 Commercial Street, Manchester, NH 03101 603 641 4144 mihaela.sabin@unh.edu  Paul Snow Independent consultant P.O. Box 6134, Concord, NH 03303-6134 603 753 1011 paulusnix@gmail.com Barbara Viola Viotech Solutions Inc. 1111 Route 110, Farmingdale, NY 11735 631 630 4640 bviola@viotechsolutions.com  ABSTRACT 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’s 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.  INTRODUCTION   Computing programs benefit from industry participation in curriculum design and supporting experiential learning opportunities for students [6]. Accreditation of computing degree programs values the productive role that industry advisory boards play [4]. Capstone projects and many course projects tackle authentic problems from real clients to expose students to professional practices that employers expect of computing graduates [3].   Despite efforts to prepare college students adequately for professional careers, gaps persist between student and employer perceptions of student preparation for their future careers. The most recent national surveys commissioned by the American Association of Colleges and Universities [2] found that students and employers are alike in their perception of how well prepared students are to stay current with new technologies. However, in other key areas, such as communication, applying knowledge and skills to real world situations, critical thinking, and solving complex problems, students overestimate their preparation.   This paper focuses on computing faculty and IT industry professionals, their attitudes about the relevance of the undergraduate curriculum, and about what professional skills students should achieve. The authors enjoyed the cooperation of the ACM/IEEE-CS IT2017 task group, which is preparing an update of the curriculum guidelines for undergraduate degree programs in information technology, due by 2017 [5]. The task group conducted separate simultaneous surveys of IT faculty and industry professionals. The current authors received access to about two hundred survey responses from US faculty and from ninety US industry IT professionals.  In the rest of the paper we describe the two surveys, summarize three chief results, discuss parallels and contrasts between the American faculty and industry groups, and conclude with brief remarks about the benefits of continued cooperation between academia and industry.    THE SURVEYS  The surveys were designed by the IT2017 task group to gain insights into what the IT discipline within the computing profession means to academia and industry. They were hosted on the Survey Monkey platform and distributed through email blasts in Spring 2015. Survey responses were given routine data cleaning by a statistician to eliminate spurious responses, to correct typographical errors and expand common abbreviations in free-text responses, and to recode "other" responses into admissible answers when possible.   ACM administered the faculty survey by reaching out to over 16,000 computing faculty in four-year undergraduate IT programs worldwide. The survey asked 16 questions with a mix of multiple-choice and free form responses. This paper’s authors accessed the responses from three survey questions: Question #1 about the country of the academic program, Question #6 about math requirements, and Question #13 about content areas of interest in the IT curriculum.   Three email blasts to contacts acquired from the International Book Information Service (IBIS) and one email blast to members of the ACM Special Interest Group for Information Technology Education (SIGITE) produced 589 responses. Of these, 205 (34.8%) were from US. The US response rate was 3.8%  (205 returns from 5400 contacts).  The industry survey was composed by a subgroup of the IT2017 committee and an industry consultant. They adapted six of the faculty questions for an industry audience. This adaptation included rewording some of the prompted responses. Two of those questions, Question #4 on math requirements and Question #6 on content areas, are used in this paper. The subgroup added one new question, Question #7 about skill sets, which is also used here.  The Association for Information Technology Professionals (AITP) distributed the industry survey to 1,871 members who worked outside of academia. A total of 91 members responded (5% response rate), with 90 from the United States. Table 1 shows the distribution of sizes of the IT departments in which the US respondents work.  Less than 10 employees 41 46% Between 10 and 30 employees 17 19% Between 30 and 50 employees 5 6% Between 50 and 100 employees 7 8% Over 100 employees 20 22%   Table 1, Sizes of US industry survey respondents’ IT departments   RESULTS Crucial areas of mathematics  Both groups were asked, “For a strong and rigorous undergraduate degree program in information technology, indicate the areas of mathematics you believe are necessary to produce a competent IT graduate in the mid-2020s. Check all that apply.” The two surveys had slightly different lists for prompted answers, both including a free-text “Other (please specify)” option. 187 US faculty and all 90 US industry participants responded to the question.  Table 2 shows the response prompts, along with counts and percentages of responders who voted for each item, and rank among the seven items (besides “Other...”) with identical or similar prompts in both surveys. No item in the faculty prompt list matched “Financial modeling and budgeting” on the industry list. The prompt “Business mathematics/calculus” in the industry survey, which is marked with an asterisk in the table, was matched for ranking analysis with “Business mathematics” in the faculty survey.  Industry survey           Prompted options                         Votes     %     Rank Faculty survey Rank    %     Votes Statistics 68 76% 1 1 87% 163 *Business mathematics/calculus 61 68% 2 5 32% 60 Financial modeling and budgeting 61 68% - - - - Probability 46 51% 3 3 55% 103 Linear algebra 26 29% 4 6 31% 58 Discrete mathematics 25 28% 5 2 70% 131 Applied calculus 20 22% 6 4 39% 73 Finite mathematics 18 20% 7 7 26% 48 Other (please specify) 10 11% - - 5% 9 Table 2. US industry and faculty choices of crucial math areas  Crucial knowledge areas  Both groups were also asked, “Consider the following list of knowledge areas for information technology as developed by the IT2017 Task Group. Indicate the 8 most important areas you believe will be essential or fundamental for IT graduates to know in the mid-2020s.” (Emphasis was placed on “8 most important areas” by underlining in the industry survey and capitalization in the faculty survey). Once again, the surveys had slightly different lists for prompted answers. Both included a free-text “Other (please specify)” option. 186 US faculty and all 90 US industry participants responded to this question.  Industry survey  Prompted options                                     Votes     %      Rank Faculty survey Rank   %    Votes *Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics 67 74% 1 7 52% 97 Cloud Computing 58 64% 2 5 59% 109 Web Systems and Technologies 57 63% 3 1 81% 150 Virtualization 55 61% 4 13 39% 72 System Integration and Architecture 54 60% 5 11 44% 81 **Information Assurance and Security 53 59% 6 3-4 75% 139 Information Management 52 58% 7 8 52% 96 Networking 49 54% 8 2 77% 143 Social and Professional Issues 44 49% 9-10 12 41% 76 Programming 44 49% 9-10 3-4 75% 139 Big Data 43 48% 11 6 57% 106 Human Computer Interaction 40 44% 12 10 48% 90 Internet of Things 33 37% 13 14 20% 38 System Administration and Maintenance 32 36% 14 9 49% 91 Integrative Programming Technologies 25 28% 15 15 18% 33 Platform Technologies 19 21% 16 16 12% 23 Green Computing 17 19% 17 17 6% 12 Other (please specify) 5 6% - - 11% 21 Table 3. US industry and faculty choices of crucial knowledge areas  Table 3 shows the response prompts, along with counts and percentages of respondents voting for each item, and rank among the seventeen items (besides “Other...”) with similar prompts in both surveys. “Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics” in the industry survey, marked with an asterisk in the table, was matched with “Cybersecurity: Digital Forensics and Response” in the faculty survey. “Information Assurance and Security” in the industry survey, marked with a double asterisk, was matched with the faculty’s “Information Assurance and Cybersecurity.”  Crucial skill sets  Industry participants (but not faculty) were asked, “Indicate the top six skill sets you believe your organization will require of new IT graduates in the mid-2020s.” Emphasis was in the original. Participants were offered thirteen prompted options, as well as “Other (please specify).” All 90 US industry participants responded to the question. Table4 shows the response prompts offered, along with counts and percentages of respondents voting for each item, and rank among the thirteen prompted items (besides “Other...”).  Industry prompts votes % rank Project management 70 78% 1 Information (cyber) security 66 73% 2 Soft skills 59 66% 3 Business analytics 53 59% 4 Database administration and architecture 46 51% 5 Data analytics 44 49% 6 Networking 40 44% 7 Cloud Computing 38 42% 8 Programming 36 40% 9 Helpdesk support 22 24% 10 Quality assurance 21 23% 11 PC/desktop support 20 22% 12-13 Rudiments of finance 20 22% 12-13 Other (please specify) 9 10% - Table 4. US Industry predictions of mid-2020’s IT skill-set requirements  DISCUSSION  There was a reasonable degree of agreement between United States industry and faculty rankings of the seven prompted math subject areas which they shared. Using Spearman's "sum of the squared differences in rank" statistic as an index of agreement, the two groups score +0.54 on a scale from -1 (perfect disagreement, inverse rankings) to +1 (perfect agreement, identical rankings). United States faculty and industry polling ranks of the prompted knowledge areas score a similar Spearman's value of +0.62.  Table 2, the surveys’ choices of crucial math areas, illustrates how substantial agreement leavened by some pointed disagreement might arise. Both groups agree about their top collective priority, statistics. They also agree about their least priority, finite mathematics. They even agree in the middle, where probability polls third among both. The most pronounced disagreement concerns discrete mathematics versus business mathematics, each topic polling second on one list and fifth on the other. Business math polled high on the industry list, discrete mathematics on the academic. Support for the math topic that appeared only in the industry survey, financial modeling and budgeting, an aspect of “business mathematics,” equaled the votes for business mathematics/calculus, as the prompt appeared in the industry survey ballot.   This pattern suggests that disagreement may depend on whether content is more useful for learning the how and why of IT, or more useful for later career application in combination with IT skills. Content like statistics, which is generally useful at both career stages, learning and doing, would plausibly be easier for both groups to support.  Table 3 depicts reasonable agreement about the importance ranking of the seventeen prompted knowledge areas between US industry and faculty. Their top eight ranks have six areas in common: Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics, Cloud Computing, Web systems and Technologies, Information Assurance and Security, Information Management, and Networking. Similarly, their bottom five ranks have four areas in common: Internet of Things, Integrative Programming Technologies, Platform Technologies, and Green Computing.   Among the six areas in the top eight ranks, “Networking” and “Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics” had the largest difference in support from the faculty and industry groups (Table 5, above the double line). Comparably large difference of support was also recorded for the “Programming” area, which made it among the top five areas for faculty, but ranked below top eight for industry; and the “Virtualization” and “System Integration” areas, which ranked 4 and 5 for industry, but placed among last nine for faculty (Table 5, below double line).   Prompted options                                  Industry ranks   Faculty ranks    Industry %   Faculty % Networking 8 2 54% 77% *Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics 1 7 74% 52% Programming 9-10 3-4 49% 75% System Integration and Architecture 5 11 60% 44% Virtualization 4 13 61% 39% Table 5. Extract from Table 3, knowledge areas with substantial but remarkably different support  Using slightly different names in the two surveys for the two areas that encompass information assurance, cybersecurity, and digital forensics (marked with single or double asterisks in Table 3) might explain the difference in support for those areas. The uneven support for the other areas in Table 5 might indicate an academic focus on foundational areas, such as networking and programming, and their importance to scaffold more specialized areas that are of high interest to industry, such as virtualization and system integration and architecture.  Turning to industry predictions of skill set requirements (Table 4), three of the four bottom-ranked skills (helpdesk support, PC/desktop support and rudiments of finance) are often pursued in two-year rather than four-year programs. Of the ten other prompted skills, five relate closely to prompted knowledge areas. Three of the five either did well among both skill sets and industry’s preferred knowledge areas (cybersecurity in various phrasings) or relatively poorly on both rankings (networking and programming). Data analytics ran a bit better among skills (6 of 13) than big data, among knowledge areas (11 of 17). Cloud computing did much better among industry’s knowledge area ranking (2 of 17) than among skill sets (8 of 13).   Although not identical in content, the good showing of business analytics seems in line with the industry’s top preferences among math areas, statistics and business math. Similarly, database skills’ placement (6 of 13) and information management’s (7 of 17) were comparable.  There is no surprise that two skill sets did especially well, project management (1 of 13) and soft skills (3 of 13). Domain independent rather than peculiar to computing disciplines, these directly transferable skills have been consistently and highly valued in industry surveys [1, 2]. CONCLUSIONS  When asked about their preferences among mathematics subject areas and their predictions of which knowledge areas will be crucial in the near future, faculty and industry participants resembled each other. When industry respondents were asked about what skill sets will be needed in the same near-future time frame, their answers were generally as might be expected based on their curriculum preferences. Industry’s strong support for two of the domain independent skills, “soft” skills and project management, is consonant with a general tendency for United States baccalaureate education to balance depth and breadth.  If agreement was all there was, then there would be little need for formal consultations apart from planning specific cooperative ventures, like internships. However, the survey also found some high-level differences. Broadly speaking, and predictably, faculty placed higher value on topics that are useful for learning more (such as discrete mathematics and programming, for example), while industry gave more weight to topics immediately applicable to producing more (like business mathematics and cybersecurity).  A skill gap persists between employers’ expectations and graduates’ demonstration of key competencies in communication, problem solving, and application of technical knowledge to authentic problems. The study in this paper reassures computing faculty and industry professionals that ongoing dialog and collaboration in curriculum development is mutually beneficial. Periodic updates of computing curricula by ACM and partnering professional societies rely on industry feedback. Academic programs integrate a variety of experiential learning opportunities through internships and industry-sponsored projects. Faculty and industry professionals alike have the responsibility to continue to communicate to each other the relevance of what they do the best in their respective domains, and create and support more effective pathways to transfer content mastery into professional practices.  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors thank the ACM and AITP for their generous support in organizing and executing the faculty and industry surveys.  REFERENCES [1] CareerBuilder Harris Poll, Companies Planning to Hire More Recent College Graduates, CareerBuilder Survey Press Release (April 23), 2015. [2]  Hart Research Associates, Falling Short? College Learning and Career Success, Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2015. [3] Gorka, S., Miller, J.R., and Howe, B.J., Developing realistic capstone projects in conjunction with industry, Proceedings of the 8th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education (SIGITE '07), 2007. [4] Linville, D., Moulder, R., Adkins, J., Ingram, J., Spradling, C., and Martin, L., University, K-12, and businesses collaborate in professional advisory team: panel discussion, Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, 30, 5 (May 2015).  [5] Sabin, M., Alrumaih, H., Impagliazzo, J., Lunt, B., M., Tang, C., and Zhang, M., ACM/IEEE-CS Information Technology Curriculum 2017: A Status Update, Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education (SIGITE '15), 2015. [6] Tenenberg, J., Industry fellows: bringing professional practice into the classroom, Proceedings of the 41st ACM Technical symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '10), 2010. 

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

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

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