The IT Curriculum Development Toolkit is a circular process. You began by understanding what
constitutes well-designed IT curriculum (Step 1), interacted with industry to find out what skills
were valued in the world of the IT worker (Step 2), then measured curriculum against established
skill standards (Step 3). Comparing those two sets of data gave you an idea of where you were
hitting the target and where you needed to enhance assignments (Step 4). Armed with that knowledge,
you developed modules, assignments and assessments to address the gaps uncovered in your research activities (Step 5). At this point, you were ready to take your new content on the road (or online - Step 6) and find out how effective it was in influencing student learning (Step 7).
But industry changes, and sometimes quite quickly! Step 8 is a mechanism that enables you to stay focused on industry demand and provides
resources to help keep up. Which of course means a return to the beginning of this toolkit process. Go
to Step 1 if you find more criteria to add to our list of characteristics. Or just cycle back
to Step 2 and begin the research process again.
As a professional educator who stays in pace with the evolution of your particular industry, you can best determine when it's time to pass
through the toolkit steps in depth on a regular basis. At the minimum, we recommend revisiting your curriculum outcomes against general
industry trends on a yearly basis, and making adjustments to your curriculum based on those findings.
Continue the process: Go back to Step 2!
Job and learning pathways
Read the document, Looking at Job and Learning Pathways: Context and Implications, produced by the NWCET, reviewing work on upper division performance expectations for IT program graduates. This document focuses on the soft skills employers want from their IT workers, and it explores the new directions that IT professions are taking today.
Workforce demand research
Read the ITAA's 2004 IT workforce demand survey. This document shows that 80% of all IT jobs are found in non-IT firms. This most recent report also emphasizes heavily that soft skills are an essential element of the IT professional's toolbelt today. Hiring and advancement depend on soft skills and on having interdisciplinary skill sets.
Curriculum update focus
Today's IT workers needs to have a foot in two camps - IT and a specialized business area such as health care, manufacturing, finance, management or the biological sciences.
- Doug Busch, CIO at Intel, illustrates this with a presentation he gave at Synergy 2004 focused on the changing nature of IT. Mr. Busch calls for "T-shaped" employees, people with a deep functional knowledge and broad business knowledge. Take a look at this PowerPoint presentation and pay particular attention to slides 10-16 that illustrate the global economy and the T-shaped employee.
- Read this PowerPoint presentation presented at a National Science Foundation conference to understand the trends impacting IT jobs in today's market. Trends point to increased experience and education required for most jobs in IT as well as a strong background in a non-IT field. Again, the T-shaped employee!
Directions for new research
The changing nature of the IT industry opens up several new directions that research into workforce education could take.
- New in-depth research needs to be conducted in industry sectors previously not considered by most college IT departments and most IT workforce surveys. This new research needs to determine the job tasks and employee characteristics of this new breed of IT professional and codify such data into standards for curriculum development.
- College IT program advisory board representation needs to shift to reflect changes in where IT jobs are located across industries.
- College IT instructors need to be prepared for another major shift in how they train for their jobs. An ability to think across disciplines and teach IT as part of a number of other degree pathways will be more and more in demand.
- And, finally, two-year colleges need to think about their fundamental role in this new landscape where two-year degrees are seen as not competitive, as observed in the ITAA's 2004 IT workforce demand survey.
Employment expectations for two-year degree students
It is less and less likely that a two-year degree in IT is adequate for job qualifications. Furthermore, it is becoming
more and more unclear that we can accomplish in two years the kind of knowledge and skills needed to be successful in many IT fields
today. Provide your students options for understanding the new interdisciplinary nature of the job world.
Browse the NWCET's Emerging Technologies pages
in CyberCareers.org to
learn about some of the interdisciplinary IT jobs out there today.
