ICT Careers

jansona — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 04:44:14 +0000

VITTA’s ICT week has just concluded as I sit down to write this – and so it is probably a good opportunity to reflect on the past week, the ICT Careers Expo and the state of the ICT industry.

ICT week is now in its second year and has gone from strength to strength. It has now become a National event and the ICT Careers Expo (as the flagship event of the week) continues to be successful. Many of you have gone out of your way to organize events for the week and have either promoted the Expo or attended with your students. However, this week is just one of the ways in which we can redress the recent downturn in our enrolments.

One of the key messages that we wanted to deliver during the Expo was the state of the job market. Many students are not aware of the opportunities that exist. Of more concern is the attitude of parents towards the industry – and many of them still believe that the industry is suffering the aftereffects of the ‘dot-com’ crash.

In Victoria, the ICT industry now generates over $24 billion dollars per annum. It exports over $1.8 billion and employs over 85,000 people. Nationally, the figures are much more impressive than this. The growth of the industry is evidenced by an increase in the number of ICT jobs in Victoria – which has grown by over 40% in the last four years (over 24,000 new jobs). I have these figures available (together with the national figures) in a presentation available on the VITTA website for you to download – which I would encourage all of you to do.

Slowly but surely we are breaking through the stereotype of the nerdy guy sitting in a basement glued to an LCD monitor for many hours of the day. The reality is that the ICT industry is incredibly broad, spanning most other industries and encompassing a wide range of specialties. Add to this the possibility of world travel, great pay, flexibility, a wealth of job opportunities. You don’t have to act like a used car sales-person to sell this to your students – in fact, it’s amazing that they are not beating down our doors!

So what’s the next step? I would suggest you try to maintain the momentum of the week within your schools by organizing more events and continuing to promote those competitions, open days and events that you hear of through the mailing lists or the VITTA web-site. Later in the year, we will be holding our annual VCE exam lectures, so please promote these to your classes. Many of the tertiary providers are also happy to conduct school visits – so get in touch with them and see what you can arrange. Last year, I organized a couple of schools to come to MHS for a student mini-conference and invited lecturers from several tertiary institutions to give a presentation – it was a great event. Put in the effort – your students will really appreciate it and you will start to see a positive effect on your IT enrolments.

Why aren’t students doing IT?

jansona — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:30:17 +0000

So why aren’t students doing IT? This is the question that has perplexed many of us as the current trend of declining enrolments at our respective schools continues.

Certainly many of us have invested a great deal of energy in promoting our courses and introducing innovation and interesting programs like game design and animation into the junior and middle years. Industry demand is high for IT graduates and job prospects are plentiful. We have all tried to deliver the message – but it doesn’t seem to be working. So what is the answer?

When I was elected to the position of VITTA President almost a year ago, I was determined to try and address this issue in a number of ways. By developing stronger links with partners like the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and Multimedia Victoria, we were able to start producing materials to promote ICT careers. The inaugural VITTA ICT Careers Expo was held at Xavier College and was attended by all the major stakeholders. Student attendance was good – but below what we would have liked. However, it was the first year of the event and as the flagship event of VITTA’s ICT Week, we are committed to building it up in 2008 and beyond.

There has been some criticism of the current VCE IT courses. As one of the members of the writing team for the current course, I stand by its structure and content. We were very aware of the falling IT enrolments and of the need to build in interesting and varied tasks. We also built in tasks centered on career pathways. I feel strongly that the VCE IT courses need to have academic rigor and students expect this to be the case. But still VCE enrolments have continued to decline. However, I would contend that this is not as a result of the content of the VCE IT study design, but rather one of a lack of student IT career pathways.

I feel strongly that clear student IT pathways will help address this issue. For this to happen, the tertiary providers need to come on board. At present, none of the tertiary providers list either of the VCE IT studies as a prerequisite. Worse still, some stakeholders have suggested they prefer to have students enter their courses with no secondary IT experience, as they have to ‘unlearn’ students who have done a VCE IT study. At the same time, these very stakeholders have been beating down our doors to organise information sessions with our students to promote their courses, as their own enrolments have been declining in line with ours.

Imagine if the tertiary providers listed the VCE IT studies as prerequisites to their own courses? Alternatively, perhaps undertaking a VCE IT course could earn a student course credits? If the tertiary providers do not feel our VCE or middle school courses have vigour, why not get involved in writing teams and focus groups to produce resources and course materials?

The challenge has been made – a coordinated approach to this issue will help all of us in the long run and may well be a large part of the solution.

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ICT Careers

Why aren’t students doing IT?