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Interesting post over at ZDNet regarding Twitter in education.
More than the content of the post I think it's useful in reminding practitioners (and IT managers) that technology is not, in and of itself, good or bad, it's how we use it.
If Twitter can be used to take a quick poll of students without installing any fancy software - why not?
OK Let's get the sniggers out of the way first. Yes, I know that Microsoft setting up a site asking are you certifiable will be the start of many jokes but it's actually a useful site.
Designed to help consider whether Microsoft certification is the right way to go it takes the form of a trivia game with technical (and some not so technical questions). Top spots get onto the leaderboard and, far more importantly, bragging rights.
Image via WikipediaThe danger for all qualifications is their limited shelf life. Alan Kay said that the best way to predict the future was to create it. Unfortunately, there is a minimum eighteen month development cycle for qualifications that means that often the course has a degree of redundancy by the time it is available. The inevitable outcome is that the future has become the past before we can influence it.
In addition, the 'big bang' effect in colleges means that getting a new qualification, creating assessments, writing support notes and shepherding the new award through the quality process ensures that only the most enthusiastic, or foolish, colleges immediately implement new qualifications, ensuring that they are further out of date.
What is needed, perhaps, is nothing less than a root and branch reform of Higher National Computing to address these challenges.
A core change could be to create an HN General Computing. To achieve this award, students would have to successfully complete the required number of units. These units, save for some exceptions, can be those that are approved for any Computing course of study. There would be a relatively small (say three or four) number of mandatory credits which would be 'soft' skills such as project management or working in a project team.
To ensure a proper spread of knowledge, areas/topics would be grouped and a limit placed on the number of units available from each group. For example, there might be a minimum of one and a maximum of eight credits available from a programming group that could count towards the award.
Where duplication exists, such as with the 'Professional Issues' units, only one unit would be eligible.
To differentiate awards and give them an identity, sets of extra mandatory units could be created or a specific number of credits from a group might be set. In either case specialism would not be necessary to achieve the general award.
The other major change would be to set up a revolving standing committee responsible for researching, writing and implementing new units in response to demand from stakeholders. These units would be immediately added to the pool of units available for the award.
This approach would be advantageous for all stakeholders:
Students would not be forced to specialise on their first day at college. Instead they could work towards an award secure in the knowledge that their work would not be wasted.
Colleges would benefit from being able to consolidate many classes, only providing specialisms where there was clear demand and at the latest possible time in the course. Those specialisms could also be closely tailored to local articulation routes.
Practitioners would benefit from a stable set of base units with small but regular turnover.
Industry would have access to more computing students with current skills.
Image by Getty Images via DaylifeWhat's the first thing that Computing practitioners should do? Be realistic.
Computing took great advantage of a boom in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This boom was fuelled by many reasons including the massive uptake of computers in general business, the millennium bug, the dot.com boom etc.
This boom led to a large increase in the number of course offered and the number of computing professionals added to the pool. The pool of professionals has now reached a natural plateau where the requirement, at HNC and HND level, is mainly to refresh the pool of talent rather than expand it.
Computing as a high-end technical subject has less potential for attracting students than IT as a business support subject. Therefore consideration should be given to Computing departments teaching IT subjects that are embedded in other curricular areas such as Business Management programmes to ensure their quality and viability.
Image via WikipediaFollowing yesterday's post and in advance of the next few I think it is necessary to define what I mean by Computing.
For the purposes of this blog, differentiation is made between Computing (a technical discipline where programming is an example of a subject that might comprise one part of an award) and IT (as within a business discipline including areas such as word processing).
This blog concentrates on the challenges and opportunities facing Computing departments teaching Computing subjects.
Change This is always a good place to go for giving your brain a kick start. The various manifestos available may not always be correct (or even good), but they are always thought-provoking. This one for example by Frances Cole Jones reminds us that public speaking isn't an inate gift but something that can be worked on. As the site says:
Despite a pervasive idea that some people areborn with a 'gift' for public speaking—and that this gift is the reasonthey excel when presenting themselves—my experience has proven this isn’t so. I believe that everyone can be a great speaker, and this includes you.
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Like all of you I have sat through my share of interminable PowerPoint presentations wishing, in the words of the late, great Douglas Adams, that the presenter's "own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization" would leap "straight up through his neck and throttle his brain".
That has never happened.
Instead, perhaps we could make sure that presentations follow the rules of Pecha Kucha. These are:
Each slide is displayed for exactly twenty seconds
One they're done you sit down
Be honest, wouldn't you just love presenters to have done enough ground work to follow those rules instead of rattling on about nothing, nothing, at all? I think I'll try it for my next presentation.
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