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. 

Software Engineers are in great demand!

I work with quite a few employers and they all have been telling me that Software Engineers (SE) are in great demand right especially in Health IT and financial services. Baseline has an article about how SE are in great demand so there is some confirmation of what I have been seeing lately.

Now, what does it take to break into SE? Well, you need to have PI type of skills. You need a broad IT skill set with depth in an area. Also, you need to be skilled in a domain. Right now, Java skills in depth through J2EE and .Net are both in heavy demand. I also see companies with needs in LAMP also.

References

Software Engineers are in great demand

New Innovative Startups

One of things I like to research are the innovative projects that are being funded by Venture Capitalists. TechCrunch wrote an article recently on the best YCombinator Startups.

One of the challenges of integrating voice into an application is complexity to do so. A new startup, wit.ai, seems to have solved this problem with an API to integrate voice commands into your app. This will be fascinating to watch the viability of this company going forward.

There were other projects but I found interesting the number of Health IT projects. Right now Health IT is pretty hot so it is not a surprise funding is happening with Health IT projects.

I am always on the look out for new innovative education technologies. Clever is an interesting application that looks to help integrate multiple legacy systems. See it at getclever.com.

References.

Best Y Combinator Startups
Clever: Ed Tech Startup

Course Design

If our job is to prepare students for the workforce, we must balance teaching the knowledge and skills to students. Students must be more active in their learning. The days sitting in a class listening to faculty lecture needs to be a thing of the past. We need to focus on courses that are centered on projects and not fake projects but real projects that will help students prepare for the workforce. So, class could be structured as follows -

The Project Context

Weeks 1-3 Proposal/Requirements
Weeks 3-8 Design/Implementation
Weeks 8-9 Testing/Deployment
Week 10 Project Delivery

There are some key principles that the students need to master. Faculty can provide reading assignments and videos that provides the foundation knowledge needed to do the project. You will find that students will be more motivated to learn because they will need information to do the project. The concepts support the project instead of the project supports the concepts. There is a tendency to add a lot of concepts and you end up just mentioning them with no depth to learning. This forces you to only cover what is needed to do the project. The focus of the course is the student has been hired by X to do Y. Information about the context of the project gives all the information needed to understand the domain the project is in. The context is as much information about the company and other details needed to do the project. We want to students to simulate working and have deadlines for students to meet. Week 10 is presenting the final product/paper to the client. Students learn to write technical documentation such requirements documents, etc. This is reinforced in each course. Some courses might provide a requirements document and the course is focused is on delivering a product. Some courses might be just to deliver a requirements document. The goal is to make the work real to students who are working in a term. For some faculty, this technique seems very foreign.

I always get but the students do not know anything. Well, they are increasing not learning concepts anyway in a traditional model. They are forgetting everything in a few months anyway.

We are not doing our jobs as educators. We need them prepared to work. The classroom needs to be redesigned like the workplace and provide tasks/projects that students work on just like they were in an actual workplace. You will find a more engaged student and more satisfied with the course at the end. From January through March, we piloted several project courses (one undergrad and one grad). 100% of the students would rather have a project course than a traditional course. I have done these types of courses for a long time with great success. It is not easy and requires more work by the faculty but we need to do something different if we want different outcomes.  More to come ...

College Enrollment Declines

John Ebersole in a Forbes Article in December wrote -

"According to data released by the Census Bureau earlier this year, college enrollment for fall 2012 was nearly half a million lower than the year prior. This decline, it reported, was driven by students 25 and older who accounted for almost 90 percent of the decrease."

I have a hypothesis of the decline for 25 and older students in education. In the IT workforce, experience and skills outweigh education today. I have talked to a lot of employers and friends and there is a consensus among them that is startling to me as an educator.

If education can not help students with the experience and skills, why would people enroll in school? Why would someone rack up debt if there is nothing for them at the end of a program? What is the ROI for someone to attend school?

People attend school to help them move up in their careers or into careers. If the school can not help them with that I can see why enrollments are down. We have to do a better job in understanding the ROI of students and why they come to school in the first place. I think there is a disconnect between education and the workforce and gulf is getting larger.

Thankfully, there is a solution and we have to transform learning to improve the situation. We have to provide the experience and skills in a program of study. We can not just educate; we must educate and train. We must listen to the needs of students and employers and be the bridge between the two. We can not put our heads in the sand and hope the world changes towards us. That is not going to happen. We must lead! We must transform! We must help and not be a barrier to success! Our success is our graduates success!

References

An Upside Down Economy - Education Cycle

Digital Badges - Are they a solution to the credentials issue?

Digital Badges

     There is a credentials issues in IT education. For employers, grades are meaningless today. They do not tell them what a student can do today. They want to know what the competencies of graduates are and what level they are at. A resume does not really tell an employer much except what is told to them by their candidates. A resume lists the experiences and skills they have BUT not what they can do.

     There is a movement called Digital Badges. Digital Badges is a technique that allows someone to document the skills someone has. The concept is similar to the Boy Scouts Merit Badges. I am hopeful that badges could be a solution but I am concerned that badges are given out when someone completes a task or series of tasks. How do we know what is learned in these tasks? Someone could do the tasks but not learn a lot.

    I believe a combination of the prior learning assessment (PLA) and badges could help this out. Experience is what employers want today and PLA is a way to measure that learning has taken place. So, I would like to see more accountability in how badges are awarded and not just awarded for completing simple tasks without some assessment of the learning taking place. This does not mean that we will just create a test and when they pass we award the badge. It is much more than that. Students must demonstrate the skill and also the knowledge gained in learning that skill. This will provide some accountability that the badge the student has earned truly illustrates the knowledge and skills learned in that badge that was earned.

References

Digital Badges

The Death of the Entry Level Job

This recent email we got from an employer sums up the issue that we face as IT educators -

He looks like he is on the right track in terms of growing in his young career. However, our internships and full-time positions are very competitive, and he doesn’t have a lot of experience or education at this point. We are looking for people with the drive and dedication (which I’m sure he has), but also experience, work history and education means a lot. I don’t think he would qualify unfortunately. Have a great day!

For the last 10+ years, I have researched the IT employment picture and increasingly employers are not satisfied with new graduates. Some even think it takes 2 years to get someone billable. The consulting firms have figured out that they must provide training to prospective employees that lasts anywhere from 6-8 weeks. I am puzzled why we as IT educators do not provide the education and training necessary to be successful today. We, at Stratford, have decided to transform our IT programs to change how we prepare students for the IT workforce. It will not be easy but we have to. We have an obligation to our students to help them be prepared to work at graduation. I have been working a new model and have prepared a white paper on this issue.

Updated: Learning through Experience

I'm back. Sorry for the long delay in blog posts. I am now going to provide a concept map of learning through experience. Learning is more than just sitting in a classroom, taking tests, and getting degree. It is about becoming a professional. Becoming a professional is about being immersed into the activities of a community of professionals. Immersive activities is about the learning experience. Learning takes place through experience. The learning experience consists of practice fields and real fields. Think about how different sports get ready for games, the real field. They practice. They are put into simulated experiences and also do deliberate practice. Simulated experiences are like scrimmages. Deliberate practice is like practicing techniques over and over again until they are mastered. Simulated experiences and real fields consists of a coach, activity, and a learner. The biggest difference between a simulated experience and a real field is about identity. Practice allows learners to practice a professional identity but it is the real field where becoming a professional takes places under real world conditions. Nothing can replace the actual experience but simulated experiences are good to help learners practice skills under a controlled environment. The coach is the teacher in this model and their provide just in time teaching and assess performance during practice and real fields. There are many ways to assess the experience of a learner through performance assessments. We will review different kinds of activities in a later blog post. We will also explore the role of a coach in a later blog post.

How to teach creativity and innovation to learners?

In my previous posts, I put together a definition of creativity and innovation. You will notice that these skill sets are not hard skills but soft skills. How do you teach this skills to learners? Teachers can not stand in front of the classroom and transfer creativity and innovation to learners. They must model and demonstrate these skills and they need to demonstrate them.

This is much different from learning as we know it in a traditional classroom. It is all about learning by experience. I am convinced that the only way to prepare learners for the next generation of jobs is through practice and real world experiences. The traditional way we would look at this would be to design a class in creativity and innovation and put slides together on what it is and test learners on the concept of creativity and innovation. I know this is a simplistic view of how this is done but it will help get my point across. Learners would never acquire the creativity and innovation skill doing this. We need to look at this in a completely different way. We need to ask ourselves what kinds of experiences do we need to design to allow learners to be able to practice creativity and innovation skills?

Of course, I believe that we need to do this in a context. Since I am a technologist and a runner, I will stick with what I know when I describe this.

Systems Inquiry Overview

Before I go any further in the innovation skills realm, I want to describe a systems worldview that will be the focus on my blogging from now on. Systems inquiry is three interrelated domains - systems theory, systems philosophy, and systems methodology. Systems theory is about the science of wholeness. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The new Science that Margaret Wheatley talks about in her writings falls into systems theory. Systems philosophy is a systems worldview; systems thinking is an approach to new ideas and possibilities. The systems philosophy I will use is the cultural-history school of psychology. Systems methodology are the methods used in systems investigations and the tools for application of systems theory to problems. I will use activity theory and appreciative inquiry as the systems methodology. Systems consists of both hard systems and human systems. You can not look at the world with only a hard systems or a human systems lens. I will look at the systems using a holistic approach. Systems require looking at the people, processes, and technology of the system. You also need to consider the culture and community. When I talk about systems, I will be using the community as a system in my posts. I feel that the community is central to understanding innovations and the adoption of innovations. Sometimes innovations will create a new community around the innovation which to me is a disruptive innovation or a new process and/or technology is introduced to a community which transforms the community. Activity theory is used to show activity of a community and the transformation of a community. Each individual has an unique identity in a community. The innovation skills that I have talked about up to this point focus on the individual skills needed for innovation. A person can not exist in isolation but belong to some community. Now, an innovator could create their own communities if they do not exist but they usually come from some community where their identity is formed. So, you can not isolate the innovation from a community. They coexist. To be successful, an innovation needs a community to be a successful innovation. Remember the innovation must be of value to be useful to a community. This is line of thought I will use when discussing innovation in my blog.

Tools as Mediating Artifacts

In Activity Theory language, a tool is considered a mediating artifact between a subject whom uses a tool that transforms some object that becomes an outcome for the subject. Lets look at an example of a farmer. A farmer uses tractors to transform the land to be able to plant, cultivate, and/or harvest crops. In this case the mediating artifact is the tractor.

All Web 2.0 tools are all mediating artifacts in the activity theory language. Subjects uses Web 2.0 tools to transform some object into an outcome. So, there are three questions we need to ask ourselves when we make statements that Web 2.0 will transform the world.


* What is the subject who will use the tool? Who are the person or persons who will use the tool?
* What is the object the subject will act upon or transform?
* What is the outcome of using the tool?

There needs to be some motivation for someone to use Web 2.0 tools and we need to make sure that we are meeting a true need. Web 2.0 tools just on the face of it looks very promising and will make the interactive Web a reality. I see Web 2.0 as enabling communities and people to collaborate, communicate, and share.

Typically, when using mediating artifacts over time allows an activity system to transform itself. What are Web 2.0 tools going to transform? I believe it is the user experience and also the Internet will become the computer if Web 2.0 lives up to its promises.

My philosophy

Here is another item from my web site to provide context on my passion for transformation and innovation in technological education.

Here is the original post -

My Philosphy

From my dissertation proposal:

Cultural-Historical School

All the information on this site will be situated in the cultural-historical school of psychology. Cole defines the cultural-historical school as “the structure and development of human psychological processes [that] emerge through culturally mediated, historically developing, practical activity” (Cole, 1996, p. 108). Cole goes on and summarizes the key concepts of the cultural-historical school:

1. Mediation through artifacts. The initial premise of the cultural-history school is that human psychological processes emerged simultaneously with a new form of behavior in which humans
modified material objects as a means of regulating their world and one another.

2. Historical development. In addition to using and making tools, human beings arrange for rediscovery of already-created tools in each succeeding generation. Becoming a cultural being and arranging for others to become cultural beings are intimately linked parts of a single process called enculturation. … Culture, according to this perspective, can be understood as the entire pool of artifacts accumulated by a social group in the course of its historical experience.

3. Practical activity. The third basic premise of the cultural-historical approach, adopted by Hegel by the way of Marx, is that the analysis of human psychological functions must be grounded in human’s everyday activity. (1996, p. 108-110)

Social Learning Theory

Although this site will use the cultural-historical school of thought for looking at human activity, it will also use Wenger’s concept of social learning theory and communities of practice. Wenger believes that learning is social participation. Wenger (1998) states “participation here refers to not just to local events of engagement in certain activities with certain people, but a more encompassing process of being active participants in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities” (p. 4). The four components of Wenger (1998)’s social learning theory are meaning, practice, community, and identity. Meaning is “a way of talking about our (changing) ability – individually and collectively – to experience our life and the world as meaningful” (Wenger, 1998, p. 5). Practice is “a way of talking about the shared historical and social resources, frameworks, and perspectives that can sustain mutual engagement in action” (Wenger, 1998, p. 5). Community is “a way of talking about the social configurations in which our enterprises are defined as worth pursuing and our participation is recognizable as competence” (Wenger, 1998, p. 5). Identity is “a way of talking about how learning changes who we are and creates personal histories of becoming in context of our communities” (Wenger, 1998, p. 5).

Community of Practice

A practice, as Dr. Linda Polin (2002) of Pepperdine University defines it, “is a full-blown domain of expertise; it has a productive value. The following are practices: architecture, professional French Horn, oral surgery, health insurance processing, Pokemon trainer,
scriptwriter” and others. Wenger (1998) defines practice as the following. In a sense, practice is always social practice. Such a concept of practice includes both the explicit and the tacit. It includes what is said, and what is left unsaid; what is represented and what is assumed. It includes the language, tools, documents, images, symbols, well-defined roles, specified criteria, codified procedures, regulations, and contracts that various practices make explicit for variety of purposes. But, it also includes the implicit relations, tacit conventions, subtle clues, untold rules of thumb, recognizable intuitions, specific perceptions, well-tuned sensitivities, embodied
understanding, underlying assumptions, and shared world views. (Wenger, 1998, p. 47)

Each of these practices belongs to a social community, which is called a community of practice. “Communities of practice [CoP] are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis” (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002, p. 4). Everyone belongs to one or more communities of practice whether it is in our family life, work, education, or profession. This study will look at the IT profession through the lens of CoPs and the cultural-historical school lens of activity. Communities have histories, artifacts, and activities that allow members to participate. The community decides the competence of its members through changes in member identity. Members in a community of practice exist at different levels of participation. The newcomers sit on the periphery in the beginning (legitimate peripheral participation) and start moving towards full participation as they change their identity (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Older members of the community of practice provide newcomers with models of performance for newcomers to replicate. Communities of practice have reproductioncycles in which newcomers enter the community of practice and become full participants, and eventually “old timers”, through their changing identity in the practice.

Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) or Activity Theory

Since participation in a community of practice is about activity, activity theory is a model for analyzing the community’s activities. This study will treat IT work, also known as knowledge work, and education as activity systems for analysis. Members of a community think, act, and
learn together as a system. Activity theory is a framework in the cultural-historical tradition that looks at activity as the basic unit of analysis. Activity is the relationship between a member’s or subject’s action in pursuit of a goal of transforming some object, which is mediated by artifacts/tools, and/or signs. The subject is the person or groups of people who are initiating and performing the activity. The mediating artifact can be tools or technologies such as physical tools, instruments, signs, people, and others. The mediating artifact allows a subject to transform some object into a goal or outcome. An object can be a physical entity or a problem space. Rules are the methods, laws, procedures, and processes that subject follows to transform an object. The community is the collective that are the stakeholders in the activity. Individuals do not act in isolation but in relation to a community. The division of labor is the organization of the labor in the activity as related to the transformation of the object. Figure 1 illustrates the model of an activity system (Engestrom, 1987).

An example of activity is designing and implementing a software product for a customer. The subject of the activity is the team who develops the software product. The object is the project of developing a software product. The outcome is a fully functional software product. The mediating artifacts are the software tools, procedures, computers, and other artifacts needed to transform the object into an outcome. The rules are the norms of the community such as how the software is written, and what methods are being used. The community is the development team, the customer, and the management. The division of labor is the different duties and roles
each team member plays on the team. There is a hierarchical structure of activity. “Activities are oriented by motives, that is objects that are impelling to themselves. Each motive is an object, material, or ideal, that satisfies a need. Actions are the processes functionally subordinated to activities; they are directed at specific conscious goals. Actions are realized through operations that are determined by the actual conditions of activity” (Kaptelinin, 1996, p. 108).

My History

I published this on my web site a while ago and I need to post it here for everyone to understand the context of my passion for transforming technological education. Here is my original post -

My History

My College Days

My interest and research in educating the future technology professional goes back to college when I was a student at Florida Tech in Melbourne, FL. I always knew that hands-on experience was critical in securing a good high paying job in this economy. I experienced that as a student at Florida Tech when I knew to be competitive that I needed to gain work experience. So, throughout my college experience, I always tried to find work in technology. My first experience came at Harris Corporation as a computer operator during the third shift. I took this job because I knew that I needed experience. About a year after that, I was hired by Rockwell International as a computer operator and I ran the department on weekends.

Also, I worked on creating a student foundation at Florida Tech and I took a role in helping secure real world capstone experiences for my fellow students. I knew that was the key to success along with a four year degree. I graduated with a BS in Computer Engineering at Florida Tech.

My First Job

I landed my first full time job at E-Systems, Melpar Division, in Falls Church, VA. I had an opportunity during my spring break in my senior year to interview with three places - E-Systems in Texas, E-Systems in Falls Church, VA, and the Navy in Connecticut. I ended getting an offer from E-Systems, Falls Church, VA. I got this job based on my summer internship experience with Dictaphone Corporation where I was a technical writer. E-Systems hired me as a Systems Engineer. During the interview, I did have my portfolio of my senior design project that I showed to people who interviewd me. Even at this point in my life, I was convinced that I needed experience to land a good job. I brought my
experiences to the interview because of this.

My Teaching

I was hired by Northern Virginia Community College as an Adjunct around 1994 in the electronics department to teach computer repair. I took a full time teaching job with Computer Learning Center (CLC) in Alexandria where I started in the Electronics department and moved to the client/server programming department which I started as Lead Instructor. I then was hired full time by NOVA in 1998 once I secured my Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from George Mason U.

My Interests and Research

While I was at NOVA, I was program head for about 5.5 years. I decided that I would be a voice for change in the Information Systems Technology department. I became very interested in workplace experiences for my students. I piloted a capstone course, worked on Internships and partnerships. I was able to secure partnerships with Intel, Teligent, and others. I often interviewed students and reviewed resumes. I got resumes that were pitiful. One resume was a quarter of a page. I would interview students who had no clue about the concepts they had learned in their courses. Students would tell me that 'I took that class six
months ago'. Yikes! I thought. From this experience and the minimal research I was doing, I knew that we needed to transform what we were
doing in our IT program. We need graduates who could hit the ground running and that obviously was not happening from what I was observing.

Finally, I worked with the Commonwealth of Virginia to write a proposal to the NSF ATE program about a hunch I had about teaching and learning which needed to be transformed in 2002. This work transformed my thoughts on how we educate and train students in technical programs.

My Interests and Research

While I was at NOVA, I was program head for about 5.5 years. I decided that I would be a voice for change in the Information Systems Technology department. I became very interested in workplace experiences for my students. I piloted a capstone course, worked on Internships and partnerships. I was able to secure partnerships with Intel, Teligent, and others. I often interviewed students and reviewed resumes. I got resumes that were pitiful. One resume was a quarter of a page. I would interview students who had no clue about the concepts they had learned in their courses. Students would tell me that 'I took that class six months ago'. Yikes! I thought. From this experience and the minimal research I was doing, I knew that we needed to transform what we were doing in our IT program. We need graduates who could hit the ground running and that obviously was not happening from what I was observing.

Finally, I worked with the Commonwealth of Virginia to write a proposal to the NSF ATE program about a hunch I had about teaching and learning which needed to be transformed in 2002. This work transformed my thoughts on how we educate and train students in technical programs.

The more I worked with our students the more I became aware of workplace readiness issues that needed to be addressed. I met Scott Brainard, who at the time was project manager of the SCANS 2000 Center at John Hopkins University. I met him at the announcement of the voluntary partnership between NWCET, NCTT, and National Skills Standards Board at NVCC, Annandale Campus. I believe this was in 2002. I talked to him about our NSF ATE grant proposal we submitted and we started a partnership. The SCANS report was published in 1992 that talks about the key workplace skills that were missing. We started a partnership with them and learned from them how they 'teach' these skills in their local high schools. I knew that college students also needed these skills too.

We were awarded an NSF grant in Summer 2002 to look at what we called value-delivery skills and creating a consortium of IT education iVirginia. We setup the SCANS 2000 center as a partner in the grant. We had several meetings to discuss the whole issue with them. As part of this grant, we help several focus groups in No VA. The first focus group used emotional intelligence skills as a foundation to talk about the value-delivery skills needed to be successful. I felt that the first focus group was a success and now we had a second focus group that looked at how we could teach this skills in the classroom.

Well, most of the skills were behavioral. How do you teach behavioral skills? In the past, I would have looked at teaching a teamwork course or the like. But, today, I realize that you can not teach behavioral skills. You can only experience them. This causes you to look at this in whole new light. Now, I need to design activities that allow students to practice these skills in the classroom. So, this means assigning group projects where students work in teams and evaluating their performance during the project. Then, evaluating the outcomes of the project whatever the artifact may be. One big outcome of the second focus group was what are coined 'curveballs'. Now, when we teach projects the complaints that the projects were not realistic enough. We need to introduce curveballs to simulate the real world projects. Some examples of curveballs are change team members, change requirements, etc. Here is a paper I wrote before this focus group and one after this focus group.

Value-Delivery_Skills_-_An_Essential_Component_in_IT_Education_8_26_02.pdf

Oh yea! Before I forget, I wrote a white paper on my vision for the educational system in VA as we were funded by NSF. I attached that to this entry. To continue, the work on the NSF continued my research interest in Workforce Development and actually moved my ideas forward. My partnership with Mike Peterson, who was the Executive Dir of Institute of Excellence in Information Technology, was a great partner in moving my ideas for workforce development forward. Also, I decided to enroll at Pepperdine University in the Educational Technology Doctoral Program to further my education in this area of learning and technology. I have research interests in educating the future
technology professional, learning theory, learning technology, along with technology's impact on today's workforce. The last focus group caused me to contact Case Files (http://www.thecasefiles.org) and I partnered with them because they had a way to design activities that require an authentic business problem. I ended up partnering with Dr Ruth Loring and she became a mentor of mine as I went through the doctoral program and also as we worked on our NSF grant. I attribute a lot to her in helping me understand Case Files and I was invited to every major event that they had. I also worked at them also.

My_Vision_for_Information_Technology_Education_in_Virginia.pdf

The Case Files

Why did the Case Files work interest me? There are actually two projects. One project comes out of CITE at http://www.cite-tn.org/pbcb.htm and the other is Case Files at http://www.thecasefiles.org. Both projects come under the heading of Problem-based Case-based learning.

From my research, each of these projects has merit. The goal of becoming a technology professional requires an apprenticeship in a community of practice of technology professionals. Learners become members of the community through participation in the community's activities. Learning is about participation in a community. This allows an apprentice to under the culture, tools, and technologies of the community. The CSS projects in CITE are what the literature calls 'real fields' and they provide a real authentic problem solved in real time with a sponsoring business. This type of project allows learners/apprentices the opportunities to develop a professional identity.

Now, a Case File is what the literature calls a 'practice field'. A Case File is a real world problem but it is not done in real time. Typically, a CSS project becomes a Case File once the the project is complete. This type of project provides a context that allows for learners to practice their skills in a safe environment but it is not a real field and learners can not develop a professional identity in a community. These problems are isolated from the real world because they are not solved in real time. But, they do have merit. I believe that a combination of real fields and practice field are needed in an technology program. Actually, if we take sports as an example, a team is formed and practices occur to help the team prepare for a game. Then, games provide a context for the team to compete with other teams and also when statistics are kept. Also, team members develop a professional identity in the community of sports players.

Story Centered Curriculm

There is another project that is of interest to me. It is at http://elc.fhda.edu/index.html. While Case Files is based on John Bransford's work at Vanderbilt, SCC is based on the work of Roger Schank. I become a student of both of them. Socratic Arts is Dr Schank's organization that promotes SCC. It is at http://socraticarts.com/aboutscc.html. I recommend you read the pdf there. It is very cool. Also, an implementation of SCC is at Carnegie Mellon West at http://west.cmu.edu. Now, SCC is a simulation of an organization where the faculty are mentors to the learner teams. The simulated organization has projects they do with tasks. Learners are put into teams to work on the tasks in the virtual organization. To do this correctly, the whole environment appears to the learner as a real organization. There is merit to this work. I struggle with whether to call this a practice field or a real field. I tend to favor practice field since this is not done in the real world but in a virtual world.

The projects are not real projects for a real customer. It appears that CMU also has a internship requirement which adds the real field to the equation. I am no longer active with this project as I used to be. I am still active with Case Files.

Implications for Programs

From looking at the different approaches that exist, I strongly believe in the need to develop a balance of practice fields and real fields in developing learners to become technology professionals. I have attached two white papers that talk to learning to become. This work was influenced by working on both projects.

knowledge_work_v2.pdf

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog. I will begin a dialogue about learning and technology innovation for the 21st century. We will discuss the following topics such as communities of practice, innovation, simulations, technology, activity theory, and other topics. I hope you enjoy this blog.