Redesigning skill-based IT subjects for the 21st century

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Research and Development in Higher Education Vol. 23: Flexible Learning for a Flexible Society

July, 2000, 755 pages
Published by
Lesley Richardson & John Lidstone
ISBN
0908557477
Abstract 

For the past seven years we have been teaching two laboratory-based subjects in Information Technology (IT). During this time we have faced the challenge of change: change in our methods and attitudes, student abilities, industry direction, employer requirements and the university itself. For this project we reviewed our subjects, both for content and presentation style, and then conducted a set of interviews with students and staff to reflect on the content and process of these IT subjects and how we could make them more flexible to respond to these changing times. In response to this information, we have introduced improvements to our subjects to provide more flexibility. In this paper we present the five improvements we made and evaluate their usefulness after one semester in operation.