In almost every conversation MPICT has with
representatives of business and industry, the topic of
soft or employability skills comes up. From the
perspectives of employers, it is not enough for
students to have technical knowledge and skills. They
also need: to show up on time, be respectful, work
well in groups, be culturally sensitive, be able to
solve complex and unstructured problems, independently
find answers to questions, communicate well verbally
and in writing, have reasonable expectations from
employers, etc.
In short, employers want employees to have the full
set of knowledge and skills that are necessary to be
successful in real world work environments, not just
be able to pass tests and complete artificial and
structured lab exercises. They need real world or
real-world like experiences.
Is lecturing the best way to teach ICT? Is listening
to lectures the best way to learn? Instead of just
lecturing, suppose you included real world like
experiences? And, your students completed tasks like
those they will encounter in the workplace. To
achieve their goals, teams of students would need to
collaborate and apply new knowledge as they learn.
The Experiential Learning Center is largely focused on
an
NSF-funded project to develop materials to support
“scenario-based” or “problem-based” learning. They
provide resources and training that help faculty:
·
Create learning scenarios
·
Teach with learning scenarios
·
Assess student performance on scenario-based learning
tasks
The Experiential Learning Center’s own research and
development focuses on security technician education.
Their
Practicum in Enterprise Security is available for
free from the
Sofia website. Furthermore, the Experiential
Learning Center provides a library of
Scenario-Based Tasks that are of interest to a
wide range of ICT educators. They include two
off-the-shelf scenarios in ICT you are welcome to
use:
Quicksoft Associates for Ajax programming,
Edsoft: software design group for beginning
programming (C++ or JAVA) students and
C-Bay Properties for network, enterprise security, and
management students.
The following resources are also available from the
Experiential Learning Center website.
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The Experiential Learning Center’s staff and
partners teach workshops on scenario-based
learning in California and nationwide. The
Presentations section of their website
provides information about their upcoming events. |
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Does scenario-based learning improve educational
outcomes? How does it affect student and teacher
attitudes? You’ll find reports that address these
issues in the
Reviews & Evaluations section. |
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You’ll find the key components of the Experiential
Learning Center’s pedagogical model and suggested
readings in the
Leaning Model section. |
Scenario-based learning is highly engaging, and
students develop knowledge and skills that more
closely match those required in the ICT workplace. So
this approach is gathering enthusiastic support from
both ICT students and ICT businesses. If you’re
interested in participating in innovative approaches
to ICT education, the Experiential Learning Center is
a great place to connect with like-minded colleagues.
Many faculty members find the idea of adding
scenario-based learning to their teaching methods
intimidating. “If you want me to teach this now, what
do you want me to cut out to make room for it.” Most
faculty who have adopted these methods later report
that they make classroom experiences more fun and
engaging. They change the role of faculty members
into something more rewarding; students love it; and
employers value it. MPICT would like to actively
encourage the development, use and sharing of
experiential teaching and learning strategies in ICT
education.
