1. Different points of view in teaching Information Technology
Assistant Professor John Columbus, MSSE, PMP, CISA

2. References These references cover the following slides:
Scott, John L. “Overview of Career and Technical Education”, fifth edition American Technical Publishers.
“Charles Prosser (1871–1952)” html accessed 10/31/2018

3. A debate that spans over 100 years
Liberal Education
Preparing students to enter traditional colleges and develop a “well rounded” intellectual.
Technical Education
Preparing students to work and begin their careers in industry.
Apprenticeships
Actually working in a shop for a number of years actually working on real products and slowly learning more and more complex skills.

4. Some of the reasons for technical schools
In the early 1900’s, very few students went on to college. Almost all went to work.
Schools were geared to preparing students for college and were therefore “undemocratic” in that they prepared the few instead of the many.
Industries needed trained workers and the schools were not producing workers that were ready for the open positions.
Apprenticeship teaching was fading out as work was being more segregated so that full masters were not needed for every task.

5. Dr. Charles Prosser
Dr. Prosser was the Director at Dunwoody College of Technology (current name) from
He was known for his ideas of how students should be trained to work and many of his ideas are still used at Dunwoody.
Teachers should have strong industry knowledge rather than long history of teaching.
Are advised by industry as to what to teach.
We train our students to meet the needs of industry and prepare people for work.

6. Other key differences.
Dr. Prosser also said that we are to train students using real work not made up work. We should not teach using exercises that simulate work but have actual work situations that could produce usable products.
We are to teach our students using the actual processes used in industry and not artificial processes to suit education.
We are to teach them real skills that are the same as used in industry.

7. What I see as the differences in these educational styles
In most Computer Science courses and even a number of Dunwoody courses in IT, we use the traditional education methods of textbooks and homework to establish basic theory.
Our classes are broken up by subject matter like Programming, Design, Project Management, Testing, etc. These classes are organized in this manner as building blocks of learning where one component or topic builds upon another until all is brought together at the end of the program.

8. Concepts we are exploring for Dunwoody
To return to the concepts of Dr. Prosser, we have to change IT education to fit how we train in Welding, Automotive Repair and other more traditional industry skills.
Students fix real cars with real problems, not just replacing parts to practice.
Students have to finish the work and then it is inspected by the teacher to make sure it is up to industry standards.
Students use the actual machines and tools used in industry so they can operate them when they go to work.
They work on real problems, producing real solutions and in the same way they will use in industry.

9. Some of the areas we are looking to change
For our class teaching requirements, we selected 6 real projects at Dunwoody that people wanted solved. The students are working with those customers to create Business Requirement documents to industry standards.
For this class we use the IIBA’s BABOK as the international standard for Business Analysis and teach the students to this standard.
We are looking how to incorporate Agile sprints into teaching so students can do sprints for at least ½ of a semester.
We are looking to build projects with at least one senior, junior, sophomore and freshman on the project each practicing the skills they are being taught that year.

10. Our goal in our teaching
We want our students to be able to show real documents they developed on their real projects so they are graduating Dunwoody with more real experience and less conceptual only experience.
We want our students to feel more confident in their skills and feel like they have been truly trained in how the jobs are done.

11. Discussion topics Do we need to change how we teach IT courses?
Is our job to create well-rounded persons or skilled workers?
What do you see as the problems with IT graduates transitioning to work?

12. Thank you!