What will you see for the 21st Century IT Professional?
1. An IT lifelong learning continuum within and between high school, community college and university partners, enabling students to efficiently progress through new and emerging career pathways. This continuum will be achieved through a collaborative partnership design that promotes common course development and articulations across institutions, and focuses on factors that will increase diversity and enhance student readiness, retention and success.
2. A “go to” source for industry to meet its needs for skilled employees. BATEC will rapidly provide programs on a “just in time” basis that will produce skilled workers the IT industry needs. This will be accomplished through the use of applied methodologies and performance-based assessments that reflect a high degree of industry input and validation coupled with a higher level of student competence and experience through internships and community service learning opportunities.
3. Access and implementation connection for faculty development and training. In order for BATEC partner school faculty to remain current with the ever-changing high tech workplace, BATEC and its partner schools will provide timely and relevant IT professional development through tech futures forums, summer institutes and other training events intended to facilitate faculty development and offer pedagogical training for IT professionals who are interested in serving as adjunct faculty.
4. Recognized resource for quality curriculum materials. Curriculum materials incorporate current research in response to identified industry needs and national standards for desired student performance. The Advancing the Successful IT Student through Enhanced Computational Thinking (ASSECT) project is a practical application of the ACM SIGITE body of knowledge used to the design of scenario-based instructional elements and reflective assessments in Computational Thinking. Innovative and timely curricular materials such as these are shared throughout the BATEC community through a virtual Curriculum Repository with the BATEC partnership as a whole, thereby increasing the gains for each institution.
5. A working model for ongoing collaboration between academia, industry, and community. BATEC and its partners will develop, put in place, and jumpstart processes and collaborative models that connect all stakeholders and deliver clear, demonstrable benefits to ensure continued support and collaboration into the future. In addition, BATEC will develop and use an agreed-upon self-evaluation framework to provide evidence of business and social value delivered to its industry and community partners that ensures their support.
