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Leadership grows through workplace learning

David Mackay, Information Age

20/04/2005 14:10:50

Universities have had to recognise the value of practical working knowledge developed in workplace settings, and promote the value of academic forms of knowledge making to the practical concerns of everyday learning.

Deakin University's flagship degree, the BBIT (Bachelor of Business Information Technology) presents a contemporary case of a designed professional curriculum in the field of information technology that situates workplace learning as a central element in the education of students about to enter the workforce.

In 2000 Deakin University launched a new Bachelor of Business Information Technology (BBIT) Honours program to provide a fast-track, high-quality professional educational experience to highly qualified and motivated students. The program differentiates itself from other such Australian courses by incorporating substantial periods of industry placement.

In addition, a major, industry-based honours thesis was incorporated into the program. The BBIT program has a central goal of developing students with information systems/ICT skills relevant to the business context. The program also aims to develop students' leadership skills appropriate to the changing nature of the global IT industry.

The program can be seen as an outcome of both external and internal environmental factors and was designed to position the institution relative to emerging student and industry needs. A strong commitment to the value of cooperative education (or work integrated learning) was seen as a key vehicle for achieving the program's goals.

A central challenge for the development of such a program is to consider carefully what it means to create a high-quality educational experience. Quality considerations are determined by a dynamic interplay of stakeholder needs. The stakeholders of critical importance to the BBIT Hons program include the students, the academic teaching staff, and the IS/ICT profession and industry.

We conceive quality in terms of a set of productive interactions between these stakeholders. Essentially, this relates to the overall integration of the benefits of academic knowledge/learning with practical knowledge/learning.

Towards excellence in professional education Universities in recent times have been challenged to make themselves relevant to the rapidly changing nature of a globalising knowledge economy and its associated workplaces. The knowledge economy is seen as being driven by intellectual and social capital for competitive advantage. The most competitive societies, nations, organisations and individuals are now seen as those who are the smartest and quickest in shaping and responding to ever-changing human needs.

This list of generic employability skills was formulated by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Business Council of Australia for the Department of Education, Science and Training:

Communication; Teamwork; Problem solving; Initiative and enterprise; Planning and organising; Self-management; Learning; Technology; and a lengthy list of Personal attributes that contribute to overall employability.

Universities increasingly confront the need to ensure that these types of employability skills are incorporated into their undergraduate curricula in order to satisfy external industry and professional accreditation stakeholders.

Moreover, universities no longer have a natural monopoly over the creation and application of knowledge for these purposes. Along with graduate attributes, commitments can be seen to experiential learning, particularly expanded use of work placements, the internationalisation of the curriculum, and student-centred approaches to learning. All of these external and internal changes raise fundamental questions about the design of contemporary learning environments for quality professional education.

The goal of the BBIT Hons program is to provide students with the ICT and business skills required to meet challenging and diverse career options in response to a worldwide demand for professional expertise in information technology.

The following key skills are developed as part of the program:

technical skills in systems analysis and design, software development, database management, electronic commerce, data communications, research methodologies and project management; problem solving skills in addressing real business problems; written and communication skills; and strategic and leadership skills in evaluating the IT imperative in a business context.

One academic teaching staff member interviewed as part of the research reflected on how IBL placements cultivated the maturation of the students and the consequent benefits for their academic learning in the program:

"When the student comes back from IBL they are significantly more mature. It is more than just the eight months. In the final year you are talking to a student who has a great deal of depth in all sorts of things. They tend to have an enhanced purpose because they have seen the workplace. They also have a way of presenting themselves because they have been working in an adult graduate world for eight months as a professional.

"When they return you can challenge them and engage them in discussion about issues at a depth that wouldn't have been possible if they hadn't had the eight months. They genuinely understand what it is like to be in the workplace. They understand how the technology fits in a way that their peers who haven't had industry placement don't have the ability to do generally. When I am working with students who have done IBL I tend to engage them in a discussion at a greater depth."

Students report gaining significant value from their IBL placements (ie, their direct experience in the workplace) and associated work placement preparation and assessment tasks (ie, preparation for IBL placements, diary keeping, exit presentation for academic supervisor and industry mentor, report preparation on IBL experience). Seven of the eight graduate students identified IBL as the most valuable aspect of the course as it provided the opportunity to gain first-hand experience of the workforce as well as hands on experience of working on real projects.

Staff interviews raised important questions about the nature of a contemporarily designed professional curriculum in the rapidly changing and interrelated fields of information systems and information technology.

The entire BBIT academic and workplace curriculum must be designed and communicated clearly to students with this practice convergence in mind. It will be an ongoing challenge to ensure the appropriate balance and relationships between technical computing, business context understanding, inter-personal/social, problem solving and life-long learning as key areas of professional expertise.

Conclusion These considerations, we believe, require ongoing critical reflection and informed action by those charged with the responsibility of designing and teaching within the BBIT program. They require nothing less than a considered but flexible position on the future possibilities of IS/ICT emerging as a coherent, integrated and collaborative field of academic and practical professional endeavour. This requires a holistic approach to continuous quality improvement as it relates to designing learning environments supportive of excellence in professional education.

David Mackay and Ross Smith are Associate Professors in the School of Information Systems, Faculty of Business and Law; Dale Holt is a senior lecturer in the Department of Learning Services, Deakin University.