Specification and managed development of information technology curricula
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The Information Technology (IT) movement in higher education has been growing over several years, leading to a draft ACM CC2004 report that defines Information Technology in relation to other computing disciplines and a draft ABET/CAC accreditation standard that calls for documented educational objectives. As yet, there is no authoritative agreement on educational objectives for Information Technology. While proposing an Information Technology (IT) definition and objectives that compares Information Technology graduates with Computer Science (CS) graduates, this paper more significantly proposes a framework in which dialog about educational objectives can occur. This framework is based on identifying objectives by first identifying recurring concepts we wish to teach and then outlining essential questions and uncovering projects that teach the recurring concepts. This paper then continues by proposing a curricular development methodology based on the use of three-course threads that combine to reveal the previously identified recurring concepts. The significance of this methodology to an academic unit considering implementing an Information Technology (IT) curriculum is its ability to use existing courses in computer science and related cognate areas and thus to minimize the impact on existing resources while presenting an opportunity for gradual and managed curricular change.
