Using IT Industry Practices to Modernize University Education

Incorporating industry training into university courses is not in itself a radically new concept. Many examples in a variety of professions have demonstrated the value of industry input into university curricula. The information technology (IT) profession is different from many others in that it has high volatility and a short shelf-life of information and skills. Incorporating IT industry certification within the curriculum of university Masters courses has solved a number of problems associated with the relevance and currency of the content. However, there are other factors that have led to the approach used at Charles Sturt University in Australia, which has made it a world leader in this area. This paper discusses the factors that have been integral to the process. Among the most significant of these are a flexible delivery model that makes use of a long tradition in distance education, a well-developed university infrastructure to produce and deliver materials on a global scale, extensive experience in the use of information and communications technologies, the use of online examinations that borrow from the model used by IT industry certification and, most significantly, the support of commercial IT training organizations. The result has been an outstanding success, with record enrolments in a period of global and domestic downturn in students taking up IT courses at universities.