Teaching Information System Technology in Partnership with IT Companies

• Authors: Viljan Mahnič
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

We describe an example of partnership between a university and some major IT companies - IBM and Microsoft - to teach a course on information systems technology. The course is taught in the fifth (final) year of the university undergraduate program when students have already mastered the basic theoretical knowledge of information system development. For this reason, the course content was restructured to pay more attention to practical experience and the learning opportunities available within the environment of professional industry. During the course, students get acquainted with IBM and Microsoft products and the tools that support the development of online information systems. Special attention is devoted to group project work, which is not just intended for the improvement of technical skills, but also for the aqusition of transferrable skills such as teamwork, management/leadership, planning and organizing, presentation and documentation, searching for information, etc. We describe our experience from teaching the course in the academic years 2005/06 and 2006/07. A description of the course content is given and the results of a survey among the students are presented. Students responded favourably to the new approach and found the course very useful and interesting.

Keywords

EN

computer engineering education; university-industry co-operation; group project work; information systems technology

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Organizacija
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 41
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 71-78

Dates

published

2008-03-01

online

2008-11-18

Contributors

author

Viljan Mahnič

• Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana, Tržaška 25, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenija

References

• Clausen, T. (1998). Future regional university/industry co-operation: academic excellence through three-dimensional integration, Global Journal of Engineering Education, 2 (2): 135 - 137.
• Clausen, T., & Holta, R. T. (2007). Industry/College cooperation on undergraduate project work as a college revenue source, Proceedings of the 10th UICEE Annual Conference on Engineering Education, Edited by Pudlowski, Z. Bangkok, 19-23 March 2007. Melbourne: UICEE.
• El-Raghy, S. (1999). Quality Engineering Education: student skills and experiences, Global Journal of Engineering Education, 3 (1): 25 - 29.
• Ivanco, V., Kostolny, K., & Kubin, K. (1998). Co-operation between the Technical University of Kosice and industry in its region, Global Journal of Engineering Education, 2 (2): 157 - 160.
• McKee, W. (1999). Integrating education and industry through enhanced projects. Global Journal of Engineering Education, 3 (3): 287 - 289.
• Massay, L. L., Udoka, S. J. & Ram, B. (1995). Industry-University Partnerships: a model for engineering education in the 21st century, Computers and Industrial Engineering, 29 (1-4): 77 - 81.
• Neal, L. (1996). The development of the technical, professional and personal competencies of software engineering students through work based learning, In: Software Engineering in Higher Education II, Edited by Uso J-L., Mitic P., Sucharov L. J. Southampton Boston: Computational Mechanics Publications.
• Smith, S., Mannion, M., & Hastie, C. (1996). Encouraging the development of transferable skills through effective group project work, In: Software Engineering in Higher Education II, Edited by Uso J-L., Mitic P., Sucharov L. J. Southampton Boston: Computational Mechanics Publications.
• Tedford, J. D., Seidel, R. H. A., & Islam, M. A. (2007). Teamwork and its influence on learning in industry based projects, In: Proceedings of the 10th UICEE Annual Conference on Engineering Education, Edited by Pudlowski, Z. Bangkok, 19-23 March 2007. Melbourne: UICEE.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10051-008-0008-4