Practical Skills Training in Computer Education

International Journal of Information and Computer Science (IJICS) Volume 4, 2015 doi: 10.14355/ijics.2015.04.004

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Practical Skills Training in Computer Education Jun Liu*1, Li He2 Department of Information Science and Technology, Tianjin University of Finance and Economics

1,2

25 Zhujiang Road, Hexi District, Tianjin 300222, China liujun@tjufe.edu.cn; 2renkeheli@163.com

*1

Abstract Practical skills training is more important than ever in current computer education. Since traditional teaching mode is hard to meet the requirements of IT enterprises, it is imperative to make teaching reform. We improve our experiment teaching by revising the experiment curriculum, and put forward an open experiment teaching model. We set up a training base in collaboration with industry and work out the operation and management of university-enterprise cooperation mechanisms, including the training base, teaching management, student management and teaching staff. It lays a solid foundation for the innovation of computer professional education.

Keywords Computer Education; Experiment Teaching; Training Base

Introduction With economic globalization, China is becoming the most active country in the area of economy. Software industry is a strategic pillar to enhance the overall competitiveness of the country. The increasing development of software industry is now promoting the requirements of software talents. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Information Industry, the requirements are at least 400,000 people each year in China. With the rapid development of information technology, the demands of software talents are increasing. It needs about 425,000 people in 2006 and the requirement growth rate is 20% per year approximately. The shortage of computer professionals draws extensive attention all over the higher education.

Academic institutes (esp. universities) are recognized as the main provider of computer professionals in China, supplying over 70% of all software engineers in 2003 [1]. The majority of them are graduates with Bachelor’s degree, some with Master’s degree and less with PhD. Incomplete statistics show that there are 771 units setting computer science / engineering or software engineering majors throughout the country. The amount of computing graduates is much less than that of job positions simply from the statistics. However, a large quantity of graduates cannot find appropriate jobs. Employers complain that it is difficult to recruit graduates with practical experience and stronger computer skills. The dilemma is that our current educational system doesn’t have close relationship with industry requirements, and over-emphasizes on theoretical teaching but neglecting the software skills and practice ability. Therefore it is crucial to reform the educational system for computer majors to meet the needs of software industry.

The gap between subjects and techniques taught to computer undergraduates and those applied and practiced in software companies is becoming a bottleneck of the Chinese software industry sustainable development [2]. The solutions are: (1) to improve experiment teaching and strengthen the practical skills training; (2) to develop cooperation between university and enterprise. In this paper, some ideas and experiences in practical skills training are proposed.

Improvement of Experiment Teaching Traditional experiment teaching mainly focuses on demonstration and validation. The experiment subject is just an

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attachment to the theoretical teaching frame. It keeps close relationship transversally, but it lacks longitudinal relations. Students usually carry out a small programming or simple design independently. Few comprehensive and complex experiments (for example, real-life system development, practical case analysis and implementation) are arranged in the class. This kind of teaching pattern is neither beneficial for students to develop practical skills and creativity. Nor is it helpful to enhance the whole professional quality. Therefore it is urgent to improve experiment teaching.

Experiment Curriculum Design Experiment teaching plays an important part in the architecture of undergraduate computer education. It can help students to understand the theory fundamentals deeply, grasp the basic practical skills, and cultivate their creative thought. So we are to establish a curriculum particular for practical skills training and experiment teaching.

In the design of experiment curriculum, the basic principle would be beneficial for undergraduates to: 

stimulate them to form subjective initiative to cognitive activities.

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enhance their abilities of knowledge migration and integration of learning and doing.

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lead them to develop the scientific style of work and study.

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cultivate them with innovative spirit.

With respect to the curriculum content, we focus more on the latest developing techniques (for example, Java, .NET, Oracle, embedded system development using ARM) in order to lessen the difference between university and industry. The framework of experiment curriculum, as shown in Table 1, is categorized into three levels. Level 1 provides some fundamentals for undergraduates in computer or related majors. The teaching relies mainly on theory while making experiment subsidiary. Through the validation and demonstration, it can help students grasp basic knowledge solidly. Level 2 focuses on the practical skills training, including the latest software development tools and programming languages. In the experiment teaching, we persist in student-centered method and put emphasis on training practical skills. Level 3 is the senior phase for undergraduate computer education. We arrange two comprehensive experiment courses: course design and graduation project. Students are divided into groups, usually 3 to 5 people as a team, in course design. Each team can do a simulated system development, for example website design, management information system or ARM embedded system, relatively simple compared with real-life engineering. Graduation project is the most important practice which encompasses all the knowledge and skills learned in previous semesters. Furthermore students should submit their dissertations after completing the project. Thus students can get full practical training on every side for their professional career.

TABLE 1 CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK

Level Level 1 Level 2 Level 3

Courses C Programming, Data Structure and Algorithms, Computer Principle and Assembly Language, Operating Systems, Principle of Database Software Engineering, Programming in C++ / Java / .NET, SQL Server / Oracle Application, Embedded System Course Design (Website / information system development, ARM application development), graduation project, dissertation

Issues of Establishing Curriculum Traditional experiment teaching is just a part of theoretical teaching and not conducted independently. In the revised Computing Curriculum 2008 for undergraduates, we set up a systematic and independent experiment teaching system. This teaching model can exploit the advantages of experiment teaching in its entirety and help to improve the teaching quality and achievements.

In the process of establishing curriculum, we pay attention to some crucial issues such as optimization of course content, deployment of excellent teachers with practical experience and exploration of open experiment teaching pattern.

Open experiment is the transformation of experiment teaching, which embodies the idea of student-centered higher education. Students can design and conduct experiments to address a problem of their choice in the

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laboratory [3]. From start to end, it needs students individually to carry out a series of work, such as subject selection, design, perform and report, under a limit tutoring. This experiment pattern is helpful to bring up the subjective initiative and creative ability. The preliminary open experiment scheme is: 

Open experiment subjects: All the courses are composed of mandatory experiments and selective ones. The mandatory platform is for training students’ basic operations and skills. In the selective platform, students can choose one or more items in the experiment list provided by teacher, and then make conductions individually.

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Open facilities: All the experiment facilities are open to students. Students can book a position in the laboratory so as to carry out their selective experiments.

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Open assessment: The experiment grading is comprehensive, not limited to score the report, but all aspects of the experiment, such as compliance with requirements, quality of software, study attitude, the amount of work.

Collaboration Between University And Industry From our experience, the construction of after-school internship base is another key issue in addition to experiment teaching. Students can get in touch with real-life environment and learn through practice in the base so as to bridge the gap between university and industry.

Collaboration between university and industry is to transform academic goals to industry-oriented education. It will benefit students, society and economy in the long run. In order to protect the long-term cooperation effectively, we have to establish a sound operation and management mechanisms, including the training base, teaching management, student management, teaching staff and other aspects, to meet the needs of the growing information industry [4].

Training Base The construction of students training base is an important basis for cooperation between universities and companies. From Tianjin as a whole to consider, all colleges and universities should improve horizontal integration and implement resource sharing. On the one hand, we should raise funds through multi-party financing to strengthen the characteristic laboratory building and introduce company's product development projects to the campus. Teachers and students participate in research and development together so as to learn from the project.

On the other hand, we should actively expand the variety of cooperative channels and establish a good working relationship with key enterprises in Tianjin High-tech Industrial Park and Binhai New Area. The training platform is based on the form of joint laboratories, cooperative researches and project applications.

In 2009, the new cooperation agreement is signed with Tianjin Fangwei Information Systems Engineering Co., Ltd. In 2010, another agreement is signed with Tianjin Lianxi Hengyuan Technology Development Co., Ltd. Presently, we are negotiating with IT enterprises to construct scientific and technological innovation laboratory. Students should plan to carry out practical activities in the training base.

Teaching Management Teaching management by the universities and companies on both sides is responsible for teaching planning, daily management, employment recommendations and so on. Corporate training curriculum should meet the actual needs of enterprises. Students’ practical abilities are developed with the latest computer technology and project development for the real goal. The practical teaching program is adjusted dynamically according to market demand or learning through students’ feedback so as to ensure the students practice effect.

In the daily management, we use industrial management mode and strict appraisal system. Teaching methods are in school-enterprise merits respectively. University teachers undertake the basic theory, while company engineers are in charge of practical aspects. Through the project case study and experiential teaching methods, students can understand the process of industry-oriented software development and go through the corporate culture.

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Assessment focuses on the students capabilities in computer application development, project implementation and management.

Student Management Student management is different from the centralized classroom teaching because they spread across multiple companies or departments. We should follow the standards of corporate management to enable students to develop good computer ethics.

We should improve their sense of professional labor discipline and responsibility by strict management. Students play a dual role, both university students and engineers. From the school point of view, pre-practice education is required. Students should keep company's technology secrets and abide the sense of teamwork. Only in this way, students’ practical skills are trained and their competitiveness of employment is enhanced.

On the other hand, we should develop a rigorous measure of assessment to monitor the whole process of practice.

The University should appoint someone responsible for student management. In the long run, student management will have a direct impact on university-enterprise cooperation initiative. Both sides should cooperate actively, and achieve win-win ultimately.

Teaching Staff Teaching staff plays a vital role in the long-term operation of training base. It should be shared by both universities and enterprises. To improve teachers practical experience, Tianjin University of Finance and Economics (TUFE) has systematically sent young teachers to enterprises to accept training or exercise since 2008. After practising, teachers’ practical skills and research capacities are generally developed. Meanwhile we employ some experienced engineers in the enterprise as part-time teachers to guide students in training. Through several years of running, we already have a high level of practical teaching team. Thus it ensures the training base to run effectively.

Summary And Countermeasures It is imperative that we should improve the undergraduate computer education to meet the requirements of increasing information industry in China. We take two effective measures to develop the students’ practical skills and experiences in this paper. One is to strengthen experiment teaching. We set up an experiment curriculum for practical skills training and propose an open experiment scheme to foster students with innovative ability. The other is to educate students to grasp industry oriented knowledge and skills in collaboration with industry.

Future work will further develop and perfect the collaboration with enterprises, improve teaching methodology and curriculum so as to enhance the overall competitiveness of graduates. Therefore countermeasures are proposed in the following. 

The university-enterprise cooperation should actively promote the “Order” training mode so that the teaching content and teaching objectives have a clear position to address the issue of student employment.

In this way, students can consciously act according to business requirements to build their own initiative, to actively learn professional knowledge and professional skills, rather than struggling to cope with exams.

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The traditional teaching mode of closed doors is to be reformed, and senior engineers are hired to give lectures at university. Case teaching is utilized in laboratories to provide students with a better practice environment. Thus it can bridge the gap between teaching and practice to achieve the interaction of education and industry.

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Teachers and students participate in the research and development of actual projects. Both sides have been supplemented and strengthened in human resources.

In short, practical skills training in computer education needs multilateral efforts. The collaboration of industry, study and research is a better solution to developing application-oriented computer professionals, and we can achieve a “tri-win” for universities, enterprises and students.

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REFERENCES

[1]

C. O'Leary, D. Lawless, D. Gordon, Li Haifeng, and K. Bechkoum, “Developing a software engineering curriculum for the emerging software industry in China,” Proceedings of 19th Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training, 2006. 19-21 April 2006, pp.115-122

[2]

Mohammad Nauman and Mohammad Uzair, “SE and CS collaboration: training students for engineering large, complex systems,” Proceedings of 20th Conference on Software Engineering Education & Training, 3-5 July 2007, pp.167-174

[3]

Joseph R. V. Flora1 and Adrienne T. Cooper, “Incorporating inquiry-based laboratory experiment in undergraduate environmental engineering laboratory,” Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, 2005, 131(1), pp.19-25

[4]

Jun Liu and Bin Hua, “Computing professional teaching and practice in the constrcution of brand major,” Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Education and Sports Education, 17-18 April 2011, Vol.5, pp.224-226

Jun Liu is a professor at Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, China. He received Doctor’s Degree in Control Theory and Engineering at Nankai University, China, in 2006. His research area is in distributed and parallel systems, big data storage and computer algorithms.

Li He is a professor at Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, China. She got Doctor’s Degree in Management Science and Engineering at Tianjin University, China, in 2006.

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