Communications of the ACM
Solving the It Graduate's Dilemma
"The academic universe . . . is less flexible than industry" and therefore struggles to update curriculum at the same pace as the faster moving IT industry, says Leslie Jensen-Inman, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee.
Credit: Web Education Rocks
The World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C's) new global information technology (IT) education-focused body used the WE Rock event at Australian Web Week to learn what the IT industry and universities believe are the best ways for Web professionals and IT graduates to prepare for the workforce.
The Open Web Education Alliance's (OWEA's) John Allsopp said that new educational standards need to be formed because the industry cannot continue to rely on IT professionals to teach themselves Web development. "We need to transition a much more structured approach to educating future Web designers, Web developers, and information architects," Allsopp said. "A challenge exists to take the self-help ecosystem of the Web and make it become a profession with formal training."
University of Tennessee professor Leslie Jensen-Inman acknowledged that the IT industry moves fast and academia struggles to quickly update curriculum. Meanwhile, Yahoo Design Pattern Library curator Christian Crumlish said IT graduates should have "an engineering bent, technical skills, as well as an interest in what it's like for a user." OWEA, which launches in early 2010, has prepared a white paper outlining its operational plans for the W3C.
From Computerworld Australia
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