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    Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly

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    • JaredBuschJ
      JaredBusch
      last edited by

      Also, mods add tags.

      W scottalanmillerS 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • W
        worden2 @Dashrender
        last edited by

        @dashrender :
        We're a 2 year school, with an emphasis on getting students done in 4 semesters. Having said that we're working on getting things to be more flexible. We have an "ASAP" program that takes students from high school to a 2 year degree in 11 months, but right now that only has an informatics component from our School involved.
        I like your point on taking the class from a subject matter expert and not a subject leader, but I would hope that if someone has been teaching a while that you can have some continuity. For instance, in one area I went from teaching "Data Communication" to "Intro. to Networking (Network+)" to "Cisco I (CCENT part 1)". Those classes are not the same, but they're not dissimilar either! You can see from that how "the meat of the class" is there.
        I also like to use the talking point with software development that if you're a programmer a new language can be easier to learn than for someone just starting out that needs to understand the logical underpinnings of coding in general.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • W
          worden2 @Dashrender
          last edited by

          @dashrender said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

          Teaching research is probably one of the most important skills for IT. Learning how to dig through logs, how to find solutions to your problems, not just ask sales people what to buy.

          This is the biggest thing I've learned from being part of SW and ML.

          This is a HUGE issue, and you've hit on something one of my students said to me, almost verbatim. I also try to let my students know, "at some point I'm just trying to make sure you're an educated consumer"
          Forgive my ignorance on SW and ML, and you elaborate?

          DashrenderD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • W
            worden2 @JaredBusch
            last edited by

            @jaredbusch said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

            Also, mods add tags.

            Sorry about that.

            JaredBuschJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • W
              worden2 @NDC
              last edited by

              @ndc said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

              This is always a fun topic around here. There are a few previous discussions you can take a look at under the IT Education tag that might be worth your time to review.

              I will, and I should've done my research before posting (duh). Thank you.

              NDCN 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • JaredBuschJ
                JaredBusch @worden2
                last edited by

                @worden2 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                @jaredbusch said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                Also, mods add tags.

                Sorry about that.

                Meh, it is not the most obvious thing in the world.

                You can add tags by editing your initial post if you want, or a mod will get to it.

                DashrenderD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • DashrenderD
                  Dashrender @worden2
                  last edited by

                  @worden2 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                  Forgive my ignorance on SW and ML, and you elaborate?

                  Around these parts they mean:
                  SW = Spiceworks (community.spiceworks.com)
                  ML = MangoLassi (mangolassi.it)

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • DashrenderD
                    Dashrender @JaredBusch
                    last edited by

                    @jaredbusch said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                    @worden2 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                    @jaredbusch said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                    Also, mods add tags.

                    Sorry about that.

                    Meh, it is not the most obvious thing in the world.

                    You can add tags by editing your initial post if you want, or a mod will get to it.

                    LOL - while not IT related - the use of tags in general seems to be a pretty new thing. I know they have been around just about forever, but their actual use is pretty light. A good thing to toss into an intro class somewhere.

                    scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • NDCN
                      NDC @worden2
                      last edited by

                      @worden2 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                      @ndc said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                      This is always a fun topic around here. There are a few previous discussions you can take a look at under the IT Education tag that might be worth your time to review.

                      I will, and I should've done my research before posting (duh). Thank you.

                      No worries, I was just pointing out a resource you may not have realized existed since you're new. Creating another discussion on the topic is certainly not a problem. It's sort of a moving target so can bear continued discussion. Also since you are coming from a different point of view on the topic from the majority of contributors here we may get some new conclusions going.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • scottalanmillerS
                        scottalanmiller @worden2
                        last edited by

                        @worden2 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                        ..., whether or not to change the name of the program to Systems Administration (not too many "Server Admin" positions listed),

                        Not to get stuck in the weeds. But Server Admin is a title for the bench field, not for IT. A server admin is the title for someone that manages the physical hardware of servers (plugging in drives, racking and stacking, plugging in cables) and system admin is the name for the role that manages the operating system. So system admin is the top tier IT job roles, easily commanding $200K+. Whereas server admin is the top tier bench role, commanding low $100K in large datacenters with high security at the very top of the field.

                        The CompTIA Server+ is the cert for Server Admin.

                        Youtube Video

                        W 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • scottalanmillerS
                          scottalanmiller @DustinB3403
                          last edited by

                          @dustinb3403 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                          IT education has to be dated, by some amount. If education was bleeding edge, the person teaching the course would be learning the material with the class.

                          You have to do that to be an IT pro. If the professor isn't learning with the class, you've got a big problem.

                          DustinB3403D 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • DustinB3403D
                            DustinB3403 @scottalanmiller
                            last edited by

                            @scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                            @dustinb3403 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                            IT education has to be dated, by some amount. If education was bleeding edge, the person teaching the course would be learning the material with the class.

                            You have to do that to be an IT pro. If the professor isn't learning with the class, you've got a big problem.

                            Um.. . . read that again. The profession at least needs to know what is going on. Learning is good, but they should be learning the material before the rest of the class.

                            It's why they are the professor.

                            scottalanmillerS ObsolesceO 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • scottalanmillerS
                              scottalanmiller @Dashrender
                              last edited by

                              @dashrender said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                              @jaredbusch said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                              @worden2 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                              @jaredbusch said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                              Also, mods add tags.

                              Sorry about that.

                              Meh, it is not the most obvious thing in the world.

                              You can add tags by editing your initial post if you want, or a mod will get to it.

                              LOL - while not IT related - the use of tags in general seems to be a pretty new thing. I know they have been around just about forever, but their actual use is pretty light. A good thing to toss into an intro class somewhere.

                              I was studying taxonomic classification in 2003, it was a major topic at the time because folksonomy of the web was really the hot thing of the era and that's where a lot of research and thought in IT was going. Long before these kinds of communities were arising. Taxonomy and folksonomy would be good topics for an IT curriculum.

                              W 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • scottalanmillerS
                                scottalanmiller @DustinB3403
                                last edited by

                                @dustinb3403 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                @scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                @dustinb3403 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                IT education has to be dated, by some amount. If education was bleeding edge, the person teaching the course would be learning the material with the class.

                                You have to do that to be an IT pro. If the professor isn't learning with the class, you've got a big problem.

                                Um.. . . read that again. The profession at least needs to know what is going on. Learning is good, but they should be learning the material before the rest of the class.

                                It's why they are the professor.

                                Not really, if you need the class to hold back for you to catch up, you are the opposite of a professor.

                                DustinB3403D W 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • DustinB3403D
                                  DustinB3403 @scottalanmiller
                                  last edited by

                                  @scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                  @dustinb3403 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                  @scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                  @dustinb3403 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                  IT education has to be dated, by some amount. If education was bleeding edge, the person teaching the course would be learning the material with the class.

                                  You have to do that to be an IT pro. If the professor isn't learning with the class, you've got a big problem.

                                  Um.. . . read that again. The profession at least needs to know what is going on. Learning is good, but they should be learning the material before the rest of the class.

                                  It's why they are the professor.

                                  Not really, if you need the class to hold back for you to catch up, you are the opposite of a professor.

                                  This is a scott-ism. The point of being in the class is because you want to learn from an expert on the course material. Not because you want to learn with the professor.

                                  scottalanmillerS W 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • scottalanmillerS
                                    scottalanmiller @worden2
                                    last edited by

                                    @worden2 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                    So, with that background, how do all of you feel about the "state of IT education" and what can be done, if anything, to make it better?

                                    The state is bad, no getting around that. Too little is taught, what is taught is often outdated or wrong. The pace of the educational process is often far too slow. And there is the insanely large challenge of incoming students half not knowing even the most basic tenants of the subject and the other half already having a mastery far in excess of the program.

                                    Something that I see a lot is schools leaning towards teaching too much button pushing which becomes outdated practically overnight and should not need to be taught; and very little teaching of fundamentals that are essentially timeless.

                                    Like I often say, because I actually learned the MCSE material in the 1990s, I can do most all IT today. Nothing has really changed. But people that just memorized answers at the time are totally lost today because what buttons to push are totally different, but the underlying technologies and factors have barely changed at all.

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                    • scottalanmillerS
                                      scottalanmiller @DustinB3403
                                      last edited by

                                      @dustinb3403 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                      @scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                      @dustinb3403 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                      @scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                      @dustinb3403 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                      IT education has to be dated, by some amount. If education was bleeding edge, the person teaching the course would be learning the material with the class.

                                      You have to do that to be an IT pro. If the professor isn't learning with the class, you've got a big problem.

                                      Um.. . . read that again. The profession at least needs to know what is going on. Learning is good, but they should be learning the material before the rest of the class.

                                      It's why they are the professor.

                                      Not really, if you need the class to hold back for you to catch up, you are the opposite of a professor.

                                      This is a scott-ism. The point of being in the class is because you want to learn from an expert on the course material. Not because you want to learn with the professor.

                                      No, the goal is to learn. Period. Not to learn from an expert on the course material. That's both silly, why cares from where you learn as long as you learn? And impossible, colleges simply don't have material experts. It's not realistic for nearly any field, let alone IT.

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • scottalanmillerS
                                        scottalanmiller @worden2
                                        last edited by

                                        @worden2 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                        ... how to incorporate Azure, AWS, or even Docker into the program.

                                        Into a system admin program? Pretty casually. That's platform admin work. And doesn't require a lot of know how.

                                        This is where I would think something like a course on architecture would be good. Something that teaches platforms, cloud, systems, and more holistic views of IT would make more sense. IT isn't as compartmentalized as it sounds (and as I often make it sound.) Job roles might be very tight, but they all work together. They are just cogs. You need to be teaching the machine at some point, probably before teaching much of the cogs.

                                        W 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • scottalanmillerS
                                          scottalanmiller @JaredBusch
                                          last edited by

                                          @jaredbusch said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                          Also, mods add tags.

                                          Done

                                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • scottalanmillerS
                                            scottalanmiller @worden2
                                            last edited by

                                            @worden2 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

                                            At some point I'm being disruptive to the status quo, which adds to my peers' workload and diminishes the necessary academic consistency.

                                            Consistency only has value if it is consistently good. Something that is consistently bad would benefit from being inconsistent.

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