Turning the Titanic:
Negotiating the Challenges of Curriculum Renewal in NAIT’s Computer Systems Technology Program
A Position Paper presented for the
Western Canada Conference
on Computing Education
By
Jerry Dubyk and Fred Mensch
Computer Systems
Technology
Northern Alberta Institute of Technology
Building the Ship
Program Overview
The Computer Systems Technology Program (CST) provides students with a solid foundation in business oriented Programming, Database Concepts, Data Communications, and Systems Analysis And Design. Students work within a networked, Client-Server environment, using programming languages such as C++, Java, and Visual Basic. Database programming concepts are delivered using Access, SQL-Server, and Oracle.
The CST program operates on a year-round basis. Four semesters of concurrent courses are offered in each of the fall, winter and spring terms.
A 16-week Co-op semester allows students to apply the skills and knowledge learned in the classroom, to a full-time work situation. Co-op students demonstrate their knowledge of concepts gained on the job by describing and evaluating their Coop experience in a follow-up report.
All CST courses are also offered through the Continuing Education Division on a year-round basis.
CST is NAIT’s major "feeder" program for the Bachelor of Applied Information Systems Technology degree program, and as such curriculum changes made in CST directly affect the degree program as well.
Curriculum Revision
In response to feedback from the CST Advisory Committee, from employers, and from our graduates, and to meet the challenges and demands of radical changes in computing software technology, the Computer Systems Technology program has embarked on a complete revision of its curriculum.
Curriculum change has always seemed synonymous with program operations in CST. Since the early days of the program, changes have included moving from unit record computing to an electronic computing format/foundation; from mainframe-based programming languages and operating systems to microcomputer-based programming languages, database fundamentals and client/server networking environments. In addition to the hardware/software adaptations, changes in academic format included moving from a three-term, 12-week quarter system to a three-term 16-week semester system and from one intake to three intakes per academic year.
The current curriculum revision is massive, and moves the program from a procedural programming and database environment to a fully object-oriented, client-server environment.
Preparing the Launch
Curriculum Approval and Validation
While curriculum revision had been a significant theme at Program Coordinator meetings, Advisory Committee meetings and NAIT management meetings for the past three years, the project was really kick-started with the appointment of a full-time Curriculum Coordinator, curriculum content expert, and curriculum champion, three functions combined within a single individual. This individual developed a curriculum proposal that had been germinating in his mind and had found expression in his own instructional standards and industry experience over the past few years. The proposal was prepared, presented to and reviewed by CST instructors, the program management team, the Dean of our School of Applied Media and Information Technology, and the Academic Vice President. Approval for the revision process was granted and the CST "Curriculum Project" was born.
A sub-committee of technical, systems, and business representatives from the CST Advisory Council reviewed the proposal in a one-day workshop. The proposed curriculum was then presented to and reviewed by the CST Industry Member Advisory council. A curriculum validation questionnaire was sent to industry representatives for further validation. The results supported the curriculum development project and direction.
The new curriculum content had to meet several objectives: (a) to conform fully to object-oriented methodology in all aspects of analysis and design, programming and database concepts; (b) to maintain common themes throughout the curriculum; (c) to be tightly integrated from course to course, and semester to semester; (d) to align itself strongly with a multi-tier, client-server model throughout the program; (e) to accommodate the need for greater content breadth as well as depth by moving toward specializations after year one of the program; (f) to be Web based as well as classroom deliverable; and (g) to present just-in-time content delivery.
Object-oriented concept and technology based
 | Use Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Unified Process as the basis of
a system development strategy
| Shift the curriculum from a procedure-based methodology toward
object-oriented methodologies and techniques.
| Instruct in technologies and techniques recognized and adopted by
industry. | |
Common themes
| Business concepts |
| Applied Communications – a five-module course on writing, speaking and
presenting, documenting, researching, and leading/following skills.
| Enterprise Information Systems – identifying and modeling accounting
information systems within organizations.
| Organizational Behaviour – investigating and applying elements of
individual and teamwork skills in the workplace.
| Entrepreneurial and Employment Skills – skills related to advanced
business concepts, including pricing, quoting, contract and legal issues
related to a range of small-to-large organizations. | |
| Technical concepts |
| Machine-Level concepts – a "get back to basics" introduction to
low-level machine and hardware concepts
| Data Structures and Algorithms – foundation in traditional data
structures
| Operating Systems Theory And Practice – introduction to operating system
concepts and their practical application
| Programming Language Systems – low-level view of language concepts,
bindings, and protocols | |
| Programming and Systems Development theme |
| New technologies appear, specifically: |
 | Object-Oriented Analysis And Design Skills
| The Unified Process and The Unified Modeling Language
| Client-Server concepts
| Internet programming
| Distributed Object system concepts
| Distributed Database concepts
| Scalability concepts
| Security concepts | |
Specializations
Students select a specialization at the end of the first year, allowing them to explore an area of interest, and enhance their skill sets by working in a project environment.
Specializations are subject to demand and available resources, but proposed streams include: (a) Advanced Systems; (b) Networking; (c) Unix Application Development; and (d) IT Specialist, including technical support and CRM.
Classroom and The World Wide Web based delivery
The ability to deliver the curriculum in a typical classroom setting or over the World Wide Web was an important design goal. The Web version of a course is the primary resource for course content, and all examinations are based on the objectives and resources inherent in the Web content. Instructional staff use the web content as their "textbook," and embellish or personalize the classroom delivery of web material to suit their teaching style.
This approach serves three purposes:
| to facilitate the consistent delivery of course content
| to ensure the most current version of the course materials
| to provide new instructors, or instructors teaching the course for the
first time, with a common resource for course material and exercises. | |
Just-In-Time delivery
A reorganization of content to facilitate the Just-In-Time (JIT) delivery model. This concept allows a topic to be introduced in one course and used in another course to support the concepts required.
Curriculum content
Semester 1
The purpose of semester one is to provide introductory concepts and foundations of the Unified Modeling Language and Unified Process
| to analyze simple problems and design object-based Client-Server solutions
using the Unified Modeling Language, enhance and prove a design by providing
flowchart logic for object behaviours, and implement and debug solutions.
| to create accurate technical documentation for systems, and communicate
effectively in a business environment using both written and oral skills.
| to understand and apply low-level concepts to increase understanding, and
as an aid in the effective development of systems. | |
The primary programming language of the first semester is C++.
Semester 2
The second semester increases the size of systems under consideration, introduces inheritance, polymorphism, interface implementation, and stateless components.
| to analyze intermediate problems, design object-based, 3-tier
Client-Server solutions using UML, and implement solutions using Visual Basic,
C++, Active Server Pages, SQL-Server, and Microsoft Access.
| to understand and apply knowledge of accounting information systems to
business problems. | |
The programming languages used in the second semester include Visual Basic and C++, as well as VBScript and JavaScript for Internet programming.
Semester 3
The primary purpose is to enable students to analyze, design, and construct n-tier systems of increasing complexity.
| to analyze complex problems, and implement them as distributed solutions.
| to apply team-process concepts to project work, and business or
team-member interactions.
| to apply an understanding of process, thread, and marshalling concepts to
the construction and tuning of distributed solutions. | |
Secondary goals are:
| to employ the COM+ transaction services environment.
| to create distributed applications that use distributed database resources
under a transaction coordination service.
| to design, implement, deploy, configure, and maintain: | |
| secure, robust, and highly scaleable applications in support of
e-commerce operations.
| intranet-style single-server or internet-style web-farm applications. | |
Group projects will be used to enhance group concepts delivered in the Organizational Behaviour component of the semester.
Semester 4
The fourth semester provides the capstone courses for the three integrated themes underlying the curriculum: technical training, business training, and systems development. The technical thread is completed with a course on advanced operating systems, and the business thread with a just-in-time for graduation course on entrepreneurial and employment skills, designed to focus on the marketability of graduates to the IT world of employment.
The third and major theme of the curriculum, programming and systems, will allow students to focus on the specialization of their choice within the following four areas:
| Advanced Systems, with its emphasis on multi-user, multi-tier analysis,
design and implementation, distributed objects and Internet- based
applications;
| Networking, focusing on hardware, network security, and network
administration issues within a multi-vendor environment including Windows
2000, Linux, and possibly another flavor of Unix;
| Unix Applications Development to develop applications within a native Unix
environment; this would utilize development tools like Java, JavaBeans,
Oracle, and Visual Age;
| IT Specialist, allowing students to use their technical skills within a
more customer-oriented business environment; this specialization would focus
on customer and user support and CRM concepts. | |
In addition to these specializations, semester four also includes an eighty-hour elective to provide students with appropriate skills in one of the "tools of the day." This elective could change frequently, depending on what’s "hot" at the time.
The Action Plan
Project Evolution
Like the ship that was to be indestructible, this project, too, began with a vision…
While program management and the program’s Advisory Committee had long realized that the ad hoc revisions being made to the curriculum were insufficient to meet the challenges of changing technology and a dynamic industry, no concrete plan had been developed to manage curriculum renewal. The vision for this was developed by an instructor with many years of industry experience and with current skills.
| The general concept for the new curriculum was developed from
September-December, 1999
| A Curriculum Coordinator was recruited from within the program in February
2000
| Curriculum "vision" was disseminated to NAIT management and CST Advisory
Committee from February to September 2000
| Curriculum Coordinator and Sub-committee of the CST Advisory reviewed the
detailed curriculum plan in October 2000
| CST Advisory approved the plan in November 2000
| Semester One implementation set for January 2001 | |
Assembling the Development Team
| The Curriculum Coordinator – a dean-appointed individual to manage the
development, review and implementation process. This individual would provide
both vision and technical expertise, and would champion the project.
| The development team – selected from current instructional staff familiar
with the course materials, who would develop the course lessons.
| Content review team – content experts to review, edit and validate course
content.
| Communications review team – technical writers to review and edit course
components for grammar, punctuation and spelling
| Curriculum Coordinator to approve final course content | |
Project Scope
Fundamental principles underlying the scope of the project included the following:
| "The Web is the Master" – the master for all course materials to be
maintained on a curriculum web site. The benefits to be realized from this:
|
| "Consistent Process for Course Development" – the consistency of the
process is the key to developing a quality product:
|
| "Courses must be tightly integrated" – to ensure a coherent learning
experience for students, the courses within a semester should be closely
related. This would mean that a feature of application design taught in the
design course would be flowcharted in the logic course and coded in the
programming course, with documentation following in the communications course.
|
| "Program Integration is Key" – Computer Systems is a "cluster" of
programs, including Computer Systems Technology, Computer Systems Continuing
Education, and Bachelor of Applied Information Systems Technology. This makes
program integration a vital issue, since the fulltime program and the CED
program require identical credibility, and both are feeder programs for the
Applied Degree.
|
| "Course Delivery must be consistent" – with three intakes a year, and with
multiple classes of each course running concurrently, both during the day and
at night, consistency in course development and delivery is a challenge.
Strategies to meet this challenge include:
|
Project Timelines and Implementation
| Key faculty downloaded from teaching assignments to develop course
materials, beginning September 2000
| Semester one courses to be developed in the September 2000 term for
delivery in January 2001.
| Semester two courses to be developed in the January 2001 term for May 2001
implementation.
| Semester three to be developed May-August 2001 for September 2001 delivery
| Semester four to be developed September-December 2001 for January 2002
delivery
| Redo entire curriculum - revolution not
evolution | |
Icebergs Ahead
With institute approval for the curriculum project coming in February 2000, we are now a little over a year into the revision process. What have we gained (battles lost and won) from the project to date?
| "The Web is the Master" concept has great strengths, but is difficult to
implement, especially within a Just-In-Time delivery model. Web content takes
a long time, and is expensive, to develop. While semester one was implemented
on time, with new courses running from January to April of 2001, the
just-in-time delivery sometimes came dangerously close to being
"way-behind-time."
| We gained a new respect for adaptability – semester two implementation is
moving ahead, beginning this week, but with a slightly modified approach.
Instructors are using textbooks and other resources to teach the courses,
while the development team is working with them to develop the web content at
the same time. The full, "web-master" implementation of semester two will now
take place in the fall semester.
| The role of the Curriculum Coordinator as visionary, champion, content
developer and implementation specialist, was not only too much for a single
individual to handle, but also led to the perception of inappropriate
"ownership" of the project. A Curriculum Committee, made up of both management
and faculty, has now been established to handle day-to-day operations and
implementation issues, and is improving the success of keeping the project on
scope.
| "Communication is the key" – as with any project, the users must have a
sense of ownership and a personal interest in the product. The web content as
main resource led to perceptions that instructors were being discouraged from
adding the richness of their own personalities, teaching styles, anecdotes and
personal resources to their instructional methodology. Encouraging greater
involvement in terms of regular meetings with the instructional and
development teams, and a greater focus on soliciting input, have helped dispel
this perception. | |
Opportunities for Success – Turning the Titanic
Most projects encounter challenges and opportunities. Our curriculum project is no different. We have discovered the importance of viewing major challenges as opportunities for success, and offer the following as guidelines that may help others overcome major obstacles:
| Applying the methodology of the system development life cycle (SDLC) to the project is critical. Failing to follow its principles and directions is a road to disaster. It is an interesting exercise to combine the object-oriented approach to systems development with the traditional SDLC. The SDLC is a great planning, analysis and design tool; however, the iterative aspect of object-oriented methodology is great for development and implementation. |
| Staff buy-in is essential to the development and delivery process. Staff form teams. Teamwork is critical. The team has a major impact on the outcome of a project. Teams set the climate for development, review, and delivery, as well as providing academic and moral support. |
| The Project Management team has an extremely important role and function to play, and must be an integral part of the process. The need to provide the resources, leadership, direction, morale and tools is critical for success. The project management team needs to manage the project and be accountable for it. The team must always be aware of budget planning, resource needs and constraints. A defined reporting structure needs to be in place to define roles and responsibilities. The management teams must be sensitive to the potential for user hostility and resistance (a hostile implementation environment), and move quickly to dispel it. It is important for the team to facilitate, direct, and monitor the process without being perceived as the project gatekeeper. |
| A Project Plan means setting realistic time frames, attainable goals, and well defined contingency plans. A well-defined set of roles, duties, and responsibilities for each team and its members needs to be established and defined to avoid confusion between the development teams, reviewer teams and Curriculum Coordinator. |
| Appropriate consideration must be given to all students, whether in regular day-time classes, continuing education or in web courses, and the impact of the changes on all these students needs to be addressed. The transition plan from the existing curriculum to the new curriculum needs to be developed for each student and consultation sessions need to be established. Information sessions with all stakeholders, i.e. Student Counseling, Career Services, the Registrar’s office, the Continuing Education office, etc., need to be carried out. |
Summary
Two years is insufficient to provide the entire body of knowledge graduates need to be successful in their career. Instead, the Computer Systems Technology program (CST) prepares graduates for a broad range of entry-level employment opportunities.
The set of skills that are missing upon graduation, that employers are willing to supply, is one of the discussion points between the Advisory Committee and the CST Program.
CST has chosen to de-emphasize legacy technologies in favor of object-based methodologies. As a result, skills for procedural program development and maintenance may require enhancement, if specific employers require them.
This curriculum update project is the largest and most exciting project undertaken by the CST program in over fifteen years. It represents a milestone in the evolution of the program, the staff, and the quality of graduates the program will produce.
Every opportunity has been taken to incorporate the latest proven technologies into a modular design that is easy to document, develop, deliver, and maintain. An Internet-centric philosophy is present both in the content and in the method of delivery.
We look forward to the challenge of completing the development of a state-of-the-art curriculum. As always, we are working hard to produce the best training to serve local industry, and the graduates of our program.
Submitted and Prepared by
Jerry Dubyk
Jdubyk@nait.ab.ca
and
Fred Mensch
Fredm@nait.ab.ca
Computer Systems Technology
Northern Alberta Institute of Technology
11762 – 106 Street
Edmonton, Alberta
T5G 2R1