Who are we educating?

Here is an infographic about who are we educating, tourists or professionals. Unfortunately, I see more educating tourists than professionals. Students cannot be a passive receptor of knowledge. Students need to active participants in the community of IT professionals gaining knowledge and skills through their learning journey. They start out as newbies and work their way to being considered competent by the IT community. Experience is what we hear all time these days by employers and I will tell you that it has not changed in 20 years. I am seeing programs being developed that were done in the late 1990s. Been there and done that. My goal today is to crack the nut of EXPERIENCE and how we get students experience in a program. One technique is found at makinglearningreal.org. This is one of many that I have participated in for years.

Student's Responsibility in Learning

Lately, I am getting concerned that students think that learning is just a one way street and all the responsibility falls on the educators. Well, that is far from the truth. Students must be active in their own learning and understand their role in the process. Employers expect competence. So, students need to understand that they must develop their skills to a level that allows them to demonstrate competence. Grades are meaningless today. It is about what you know and do more than what you know. Educators, on the other hand, must coach students to help them get to competence. I ask each faculty member - what do your students know and can do after they leave your class?

I developed an infographic titled "Are you an aspiring IT professional?" Enjoy! Learning is more sitting in a class. It is about participating in the community of IT professionals and recognized as a member of that community.

Balancing Education and Training

Education vs Training Debate

There is a long standing debate in higher education - education vs training. I have been in education only environments, training only environments, and a mix. I will tell you that a balance between education and training is needed.

If you just focus on training, then you end up with someone who is unable to understand what is going on and has issues with problem solving. If you just focus on education, then you have someone who has no skills and unable to function in a work environment. Unfortunately, I see this quite often in the IT education world. Students take a bunch of classes which focuses on very little hands-on and ends up with no skills to be able to find a job with. This is a huge issue.

My attitude now is we need 50% hands-on training and 50% education. Students need to understand the underlying principles of the training they are doing but they need to develop skills to be employable. Employers are unwilling to take on on-the-job-training for a new graduate these days. I understand why. It takes about 2 or more years to get a new graduate employable and billable. That is a lot of money to invest in someone. But, employers still need to provide training to on board the new employee but that training should be focused on that particular job but not on the key knowledge and skills they should be coming into the job with. Unfortunately, the consulting industry provides the type of training that should be in colleges. They should be doing more advanced training and learning the tools and technologies particular to their needs. But, that rarely occurs right now.

As educators, we must provide project-based experiences to students. They will be motivated and willing to work harder with these type of experiences. They get inquisitive and start asking the right questions about how things work under the hood.

Sorry State of IT Education

Here is an interesting article (Sorry State of IT Education and Sorry State of IT Education (part 2)) that has caused a buzz in the community recently. The age old dialogue between Education and Training is one that dates back decades. There has to be a partnership between educators and industry. There has to be a right balance between the two. But we as educators have to figure out how to do a better job preparing students to be IT professionals and right now we don't do a great job at all. I will write a lengthly blog topic on this over the next few days.