Teaching The Process Skills - An ICISExperience

Abstract

Conventional education methods are well established in teaching theory and concepts. The emphasis is on understanding. The problem of how to integrate different areas of knowledge, adapt certain process, and apply onto a specific problem, is usually left to the on-the-job-training, under the name of experience. The learning curve of this is usually steep, and unguided. This is especially true for the Software Engineering profession, where human activities contribute a major percentage, which are normally not taught. Information Communication Institute of Singapore (ICIS), a collaboration between the Singapore National Computer Board and ATT as well as a good controlled hands-on environment for the students to integrate their knowledge, experience the real communication software development processes and practise the complex human interaction skills in a large software development project team. With these requirements in mind, an unique 12month full-time programme was established in 1989 and first batch of students were admitted in Jan 1990. This paper will present this unique programme, and the experience of its planning and implementation. 1 . THE NEED FOR IT SPECIALIST MANPOWER Being a small country endowed with no natural resources, Singapore can only invest in the precious resources that she has human resources. Singapore has to adopt a different approach in planning and fuelling her economic development. A major economic direction that Singapore has been embarking for the last 10 to 15 years is to Transactions on Information and Communications Technologies vol 7, © 1994 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3517