I spent this morning at Collaborative Expedition Workshop #76, “Strategic Leadership For Networking and Information Technology Education,” at the National Science Foundation. The topic of the workshop was envisioning greater possibilities for strategic leadership in networking and information technology education. The premise was basically that U.S. competitiveness in information technology is declining.
Mark Regets a senior analyst at the National Science Foundation’s Division of Science Resources Statistics was this morning’s presenter. He gave a statistic-rich PowerPoint showing how science and engineering—specifically computer science—degrees and careers are declining in the U.S. while global demand for these skills, as well as international supply, are increasing.
I kept thinking,”what’s the real goal here?” Aren’t we really trying to understand to what extent our workforce is prepared to solve the problems and create the innovations of the future? Education and job selection are, indeed, two proxies for expertise and knowledge, but they don’t capture a number of critical variables.
First of all, today’s students do not learn like we did. They are Digital Natives are growing up in a non-linear, multidimensional world. They are multitasking from the get-go. Such simplistic, linear metrics as “selection of college major,” “graduate degree,” and “position held” cannot accurately represent their interests, experiences or careers. Using 1.0 metrics to measure the 2.0 landscape yields inaccurate conclusions.
Next, we need to ask whether “computer science degree” or “computer science jobs filled” are the right metrics for computer science knowledge? A degree or job is not the goal here, the expertise and skill set are. Could it be that students are learning computer skills informally? Perhaps they’re learning these skills through interactive gaming or perhaps they’re self-taught via online tools and resources.
Taking this one step further, maybe the increased collaboration that’s now possible enables the same levels of innovation and development without formal computer science education because people are leveraging the value of collective intelligence and training. This “shared expertise” does not show up in the statistics for individual degrees earned.
Fourth, it’s important to concede that there has been a shift in perception from computers as a discipline to computers as tools to achieve other objectives. We need to embrace this societal mindshift and incorporate that new realit—that it’s no longer about the tools, it’s about what the tools can DO—into our research and evaluation of a concept like “skill preparedness.”
Finally, it’s easier to create online solutions, programs and tools now than ever before. Many of the tools that exist online today, are, themselves sandboxes for creative problem solving that people want, without requiring formal education to use them. Yesterday’s computer scientists have created tools that enable creation and development by today’s non-computer scientists.
We need to think about educational policy and programs in the context of our constantly and significantly-evolving society. The key to successfully educating future generations is understanding, embracing and adopting a new paradigm that is centered, not on individual career paths, but on collaboration. Lend credence to games, interactive scenario building, hands-on problem-solving, social networking and other new and emerging educational tools. We need to teach the next generation and generations to come as they learn, where they learn and hold them up to new standards, rather than metrics that no longer make sense.
