This plan is for the redevelopment of Professional Practice for Information Technology, a level 5 course that is delivered to all first-year Bachelor of Information Technology students. The current version of the course was developed as a traditional communications theory course and consisted of lecture-style sessions with some blended learning in the form of online quizzes, with traditional assessments such as essays, formal reports and exams.
This plan aims to modernise the course by introducing learning strategies such as collaborative experiential learning. This design approach is appropriate in the context of this course and its containing programme because it reflects aspects of the collaborative workflows found in the IT industry as well as introducing students to performance criteria they will encounter later in the degree as well as in the workplace.
The previous lecturer of this course developed as a lecture-style, largely theoretical course which was delivered by PowerPoint presentations. The learning environment was a semi-traditional setting, with rows of seats facing the front whiteboard and projector screen but with a bench around the periphery of the room for lab computers. The course was considered to be a “soft skills” paper in a technically-focussed degree programme, which all agree is necessary but was nonetheless often considered less relevant than more technical courses.
While the course was focussed on communication and group work theory, there were very few truly collaborative activities beyond class discussion. Class activities were often based around exercises found in the prescribed text books. More recent delivery modes introduced blended learning in the form of online forums for writing practice and basic practice with industry tools such as GitHub. Some classroom collaboration was also brought in by encouraging groups to research some of the theory material and present back to the class, which was an effective way to reduce the need for lecture-style presentations by the teacher.
As the course descriptor had not been changed, the focus was still on communications theory and academic writing. While these are still relevant to IT students, a shift in content focus and the adoption of more modern learning design will better meet the needs of future students and industry stakeholders. It will also result in better alignment with other courses in the BIT programme, such as the third year capstone project which closely mirrors many industry practices. It had become increasingly clear that students were getting to their third year and were still missing some of the wider skills that form the basis for that kind of 21st century collaborative work/learning environment such as teamwork and task delegation (division of labour), time management, and communication (Lucas, 2014).
Despite varying ethnic and social backgrounds (and despite the IT industry being highly internationalised), the majority of IT students share a set of cultural features often common to people with an interest in computing. The culture of IT students is different enough from a more general set of norms, beliefs and behaviours amongst the student population that a new learning design must take IT culture into account (to be discussed further in section e). As such, the focus on communication and collaboration should still remain at the forefront of the learning design, but, as per recent trends in wider tertiary education, the mode of delivery needs to shift from highly theoretical to being much more practical and experiential (Hung, 2001). Employers will also benefit from graduates who have had plenty of practice working in a workplace-like context and using professional workflows and collaboration tools, and learners will be better placed to meet quality drivers in both the education and industry contexts.
The aim is to introduce more collaborative, experiential learning into a Professional Practice for Information Technology course in the Bachelor of Information Technology by introducing social problems for students to solve in teams. This will be done in order to better prepare learners both for future courses in the degree and for high performance as recent graduates in the workforce. Students will be provided with resources to learn how to work together and communicate in teams.
Objectives:
Objective 1 deliverables: a course schedule that includes two or more team projects which allow learners to practice the skills learnt up to that point in a practical context.
Objective 2 deliverables: lesson plans to introduce tools such as git and GitLab and the associated professional workflows.
Objective 3 deliverables: formative assessments with peer assessment and self-assessment elements, plus class activities which are flexible enough to allow learners to decide on their own approaches to problems (and to be able to describe the reasons for those decisions).
Objective 4 deliverables: a flexible, portfolio-style assessment which rewards independent and critical thinking.
An analysis of learners’ needs could begin with outlining sketches of potential learner personas. The following are descriptions of the kinds of learners typical to the Bachelor of IT, and illustrate their diversity.
Persona 1: Male school leaver or recent IT certificate student, late teens. This kind of student is very interested in computers in general, and often specifically in hardware and gaming. May or may not have any idea what it might be like to be an IT professional. Sometimes this kind of learner is not absolutely sure about whether they want to enter the IT industry, but has elected to study IT because computers are their main hobby. Mostly from the “kiwi” cultural background (i.e. New Zealand European ethnicity) but 1 or 2% are from other ethnic backgrounds, e.g. Maori and Pacific Island, Asian, Middle Eastern cultures.
Persona 2: Mature student coming from the workforce, often with the aim of changing profession. This kind of student is interested in gaining the qualification in an efficient and cost-effective way. They often bring core skills into the classroom, such as communication and organisation skills, which can motivate other students to emulate professional behaviours. Also often come from overseas (at the moment there are mature students from Sweden, Brazil and France).
Persona 3: Female school leaver, late teens, or female learner coming from other tertiary education, early 20s. While females are a conspicuous minority in the IT classroom, female learners often make up for this by bringing a slightly higher level of emotional maturity and motivation than their male counterparts. These learners often have slightly less technical confidence (not the same as a lack of ability) but also slightly better study habits and general core skills like communication and organisation.
While these three personas go some way to generalising the three main types of learner likely to enrol in the BIT, they are by no means exhaustive. Culturally speaking, IT seems to attract quite a homogenous group of people, and this means that it is even more important to recognise cultural minorities present in a given cohort. IT and computer science often has its own strong cultural identity (Waite, Jackson & Leonardi, 2004) with which learners are already beginning to identify when they arrive. This indicates that while the learners do have a diverse set of needs, they also have a potential set of needs in common.
Teachers: This course feeds into all further aspects of the BIT, and lays the foundation of the core skills necessary in any branch of the profession. It is important to consult with teachers of other courses to identify any gaps in professional skill-sets that could be catered for in this course.
Managers: There are two sets of stakeholders who could be categorised here—tertiary education managers and future employers. As the former are covered in the last part of this section, this part discusses the needs of potential employers and direct managers of graduates of this programme. Feedback from these stakeholders, such as from PEAC meetings where we consult industry contacts directly about course content, suggests that professional skills are the most important focus of entry-level IT positions. These are slow to learn on the job in comparison with technical skills, which can be picked up quickly with the right training. Foremost of the skills needed is the ability to self-teach (i.e. life-long learning).
IT Industry: The industry in general has undergone something of a cultural shift in the 21st Century. While computer software and hardware used to be made by technical people for other technical people, the market for computing technology is now a lot more general. It is therefore more important than ever for the IT industry to be able to bridge the gap and ensure that their products and services, including the workforce itself, is as accessible to the general populous as possible. It is no longer enough for IT professionals just to be technical: they must also be personable.
Tertiary sector: Like the Information Technology industry, the Tertiary Education sector is constantly evolving. New modes of assessment, a shift in classroom focus and trends towards sector-wide concerns such as sustainability all need to be taken into account when designing this course. It is important that the learning design has flexibility built in so that new methods and innovations can easily be applied in the future, as well as aligning with Otago Polytechnic organisational strategies. Couple this with concrete requirements from NZQA and TEC, and expectations of meeting specified completion and retention rates and it becomes clear that the learning design must be able to meet a very wide gamut of needs.
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