Key Competencies in ICT and Informatics. Implications and Issues for Educational Professionals and Management

The ICT profession is extremely international, and so are ICT students. University students in one study group in Europe may represent ten or twenty nationalities with varied cultural and educational backgrounds. Selection of appropriate teaching methods for diverse students is challenging. This paper describes cognitive differences in multinational study groups, and explores ways to overcome some of the differences through offering online programming courses to support classroom instruction. Currently, online programming tools are widely used in schools and outside formal institutions. This paper shows that they can be efficient also when building professional competencies.

Information Technology Project Management is becoming an increasingly important skill for all IT professionals and one that can be imparted through either education or training. This paper begins by looking at what is involved in project management and the two main approaches to project management: PMBoK and PRINCE2. We outline a core postgraduate subject in IT-based degrees at Victoria University and how this attempts to handle both concepts and practice, and a PRINCE2 training course. The paper then examines the issues involved in each of these approaches and the benefits and drawbacks of each.

From September 2014, classroom teachers in the United Kingdom are required to move away from teaching ICT, towards new Programmes of Study in Computing, including computer programming. This chapter presents a developing international working model for teacher training, designed to support this major change in focus. Conceived at Brunel University, west London, ideas for the development of computer coding in the classroom were swiftly shared with colleagues at Charles University in Prague, at the University of Torino, Italy, and with De Montfort University, UK. Based on the MIT Scratch program, teacher trainers and classroom pupils are introduced to elementary block-coding, through a highly creative cross-curricular teaching and learning project called “Literacy from Scratch”. This centres on the cross-curricular production of animated narratives, together with the pupils’ own art work, for Sprites and Backgrounds. The project has successfully engaged pupils in computer coding from the ages of 5 through to 14 in the UK, and to 16 in Italy.

This paper examines two statements regarding computer science as a discipline and its theoretical basis. We shall demonstrate how those statements are questionable and in addition they tend to hide the real root-causes of some significant educational issues. Those statements are very popular in the scientific community and have noteworthy negative effect on the researchers who frequently double their efforts and get around the same problems for years. This work concludes with the claim that experts on computer science education (CSE) should be more attentive to the theoretical aspects of this discipline and should pay more attention to speculative proposals.

Offshoring of software development (SD) to cost competitive countries (CCC) has gained increased popularity in US and Western Europe since year 2000. Countries, such as India, have dominated the discussion but now it also seems that not just the labor costs matter. In the future, service levels, dynamic competencies building and community-based activities are also needed for managing dynamic distributed software development (DDSD) work. Instead of the one-way migration of RDI operations there are increasingly voices questioning the rationale of moving operations to CCCs. The key driver of this research-in-progress paper is in searching a new frameworks, tools and practices for managing DDSD work and developing SD operations evaluation solutions. The forthcoming practical outcomes described are both the improvements in SD work in the industry level and provision of enhancements for their current SD work performance assessment. Academic results will be discussed with European, US and Indian partner researchers in the context of changing dynamic sourcing i.e. onshore, nearshore, offshore activities in global value networks. The general objectives are to improve ICT-services companies’ competencies and tools in i) assessing their SD work operations with more enhanced evaluation systems and ii) make visible practices in managing dynamic distributed sourcing network operations in global value networks.

Through different approaches, organisations strive to evolve their competitiveness, as well as their addressing their operational and strategic needs. Some organisations employ Enterprise Architecture (EA), to bridge the gap between the business and IT, and to providing strategic goals. However, there exists scarcity of EA Skills in many developing countries. This could be attributed to the uniqueness of the discipline. The skills are instrumental in the development and implementation of the EA. What is even more challenging is that EA skills cannot be developed from any training facility, due to its nature of specialisation and seniority of the specialists. The limited training facilities contribute to the scarcity of EA skills in many developing countries, which have impact skill and transfer, and other resource developmental factors. This study therefore explored how and where EA skills can be developed, and what constitute the competency. The study was carried out in Namibia, using the survey technique, in the data collection. Some of the findings include education and training, leadership, and political implications on EA skill development.

One part of professional IT (information and communication technologies) and CS (computer science) education in Germany takes place in vocational schools. For deeper interlocking of theory and practice, the curriculum is oriented towards the concept of learning fields (“Lernfelder”) which are based on real-life working processes. As this concept differs from traditional curricular concepts, teachers only seldom put this concept into practice due to a lack of appropriate teaching material and deeper and valid knowledge on possible underlying working processes. For this reason, the following question arose: What are these working processes? To answer this question, we conducted an empirical study and analysed 100 job offers for computer specialists from online job agencies to explore their task descriptions and the demanded requirements. These descriptions have been assigned to a specially developed categorisation system which made it possible to reference these real-life operational fields and demanded competencies to the curriculum and its learning fields. As a result it appears that most of the described tasks are directly related to the technical aspects of IT Systems. The most demanded requirements have been social skills and good skills in English language. On this basis, a next step in this project will be the development of a general description of all competencies to be gained for the profession of computer specialist during vocational training.

This paper is part of a research to understand the learning style preferences of students at the computer science department – University of Potsdam, to be aware of which changes are necessary to be adopted in the teaching methods, in an attempt to make an impact on reducing the dropout rate among students, and to suggest a better learning environment meeting most of the students’ learning style preferences. It will present and discuss initial results of using the Index of Learning Styles (ILS) questionnaire developed by Felder and Soloman, which is a 44-item questionnaire for identifying the learning styles according to Felder-Silverman learning style model FSLSM.

In order to institutionalize e-learning within an institution its significance as an object of continuous process assessment, process improvement and process management must be acknowledged. One of modern higher education institution´s key assets is its capability to develop and sustain social and physical structures and capabilities which enable the development and execution of high quality e-learning. In this article, a case study is presented, during which e-learning related process assessment and evaluation of eLearning Maturity Model (eMM) was carried out in a large Finnish university of applied sciences. The evaluation of the eMM was committed as part of a comprehensive process assessment of the case institution. The eLearning Maturity Model was considered beneficial, although some criticism appeared. It provided a structured, although quite a resource heavy, approach to form a comprehensive and multilevel overview of the institution´s current status of processes surrounding the e-learning. By utilizing the eMM, a more informative basis for future development of processes was formed. Based on the process assessment, the case institution´s capabilities on higher dimensions of capability are generally lower than in lower dimensions. This potentially results in high variation of performance and quality within e-learning.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the elements of teaching skills for professors of undergraduate courses in Accounting Sciences. The professor competencies were studied in order to identify those competencies applicable to the Accounting field. Studies about Accounting Professor training are recent and are tangent to the teacher competencies. They are not dedicated to map them and identify their elements, nor even addressed how to develop them. Hence, it is important to reflect on what skills are necessary for this professor. This is the intention in the continuation of this study in depth.

It is recognised in the literature that mobile technologies have the potential to ’disrupt’ established practices in ways that require adaptation if educators are to harness their potential. Thus, there is a need for participatory models of research and partnership that give teachers agency over the process of professional development with new technologies at a time when there is increasing pressure for educators to respond to the proliferation of mobile technologies. This paper reports on the development and initial testing of a participatory narrative ecology approach to developing teachers’ professional practice with mobile technologies in the UK. A prototype, haptic infographic was developed that teachers and teacher educators could use to story the development of their pedagogical practice as they appropriated mobile technologies in various contexts. The narrative ecology model was developed through a participatory methodology of working with school and university partners in teacher education. The objective was, to explore the model as a participatory approach to developing educators’ critical analysis of the process of appropriating mobile technologies for educational purposes and, to capture the subsequent process of pedagogical adaptation. This paper focuses in detail on both the narrative ecology model and how it was used in the case of a secondary school science teacher. The emerging evidence suggests that the process of adaptation to mobile technologies in education is prolonged and complex. Yet in a digital age of rapidly increasing connectivity and converging cultures there is a need for further research into the implications of mobile technologies and how educators can be located as central agents in changing and adapting pedagogical practices. The findings also suggest that participatory narrative approaches offer potential for exploring new designs for pedagogical practice with mobile technologies.

Skilled and competent personnel are required in the use of information and communication technology (ICT), for organisations’ competitiveness and sustainability. Many organisations rely on institutions of higher learning to produce ICT skilled personnel for them. However, many of the graduates are said to be incompetent in their roles and responsibilities. In an attempt to close that gap of incompetency, some organisations source for postgraduate candidates. Unfortunately, the gap of ICT skill shortage seems to remain, leading to this study. The study was carried out in South Africa, one of African countries to examine and understand the extent, as well as impact of ICT skills in the country. Different approaches and techniques of research methodology, such as qualitative and quantitative, and interpretivism were applied in the study. As found in the empirical study, the underlying factors in the challenges of ICT skill short in South Africa are the gap between the qualification and competency. Other influencing factors include government interference, organisational need, and curriculum development and transformative scheme.

This positional paper opened a symposium within the Information Technology in Educational Management (ITEM) strand of the IFIP KEYCIT conference in Potsdam, Germany, on 2^nd July 2014. The key question asked, across the seven papers presented and included as chapters in this book, was: how do digital technologies support life transitions? The argument within this initial positional paper asked a pre-requisite question: what are life transitions, and how might they be connected to digital technologies and learning? Life transitions can occur at different times across a lifespan, and different technologies may be used by those involved, not only according to the age of the learner, but also according to their needs. Temporal shifts as learning technologies develop make their influences on life transitions difficult to generalise or even to monitor; affordances and facilities that learners can use over time, and which they can apply to their life transition needs, change, as digital technologies are diversified. This paper considers features and factors that affect learners in their uses of digital technologies in life transition settings. A framework for exploring the ways learners might use digital technologies within life transitions will be developed; other papers within the symposium explore factors and features in a variety of more specific settings and detail.

This paper explores the underlying assumptions that are often made concerning the beneficial impact of the use of Digital Technologies in relation to the motivation for academic work, and related forms of engagement. In particular, these claims are assessed in the context of an overarching concern with the motivational characteristics that are most likely to abet the effective transition of young people from one context to another. In this light, relevant theories of motivation are explored together with an assessment of how they might, together, provide a more productive basis for the development of the role of Digital Technology in assisting the making of effective transitions.

This paper will compare a range of recently developed frameworks, which identify digital skills and competencies drawn from the United Kingdom (UK), from across the wider European Union, and internationally to include Australia. It will also briefly explore who and what is driving this agenda. The models will be set within the context of recent evidence that highlight the deficits that exist in children and young people’s skills and competencies in order to emphasise the need for schools to address this issue. In order to consider the issue more practically, it will explore the digital skills and competencies of one young person who is currently in transition to explore how useful the frameworks are for the development of their skills. It will show the correspondence and divergence between the different frameworks and the composite headings which can be drawn from the content. Examples of these dimensions will be outlined to show how digital technologies, and particularly digital skills and competencies, can influence a specific transition from school to college.

How are digital skills developed for those involved in life transitions to employment? Digital skills are developed over time. Some of these skills are developed in formal education, others in informal and non-formal education settings. Digital skills are acquired over time through educational and social use of technology, through formal instruction, informal self-learning and learning from peers. Our world today requires digital skills to enable an individual to succeed in finding, evaluating and creating information for further and higher education, training and employment. This paper examines the need for these skills, some European initiatives and the frameworks which define the skills.

Emerging digital technologies play a key role in the development of enterprises. Their uses demand a transition on the part of knowledge workers, however. Web 2.0 is an emerging communication technology that supports collaborative knowledge sharing in corporate learning paradigms, changing tailor-made, expensive and high learning curve digital systems to simple but well-accepted ones [1, 2]. These platforms revolutionise how participants share, communicate and create knowledge in a corporate setting [3]. The use of Web 2.0 to support Knowledge Sharing (KS) has been extensively investigated [4, 5]. Studies that use a task-technology fit model on systems such as decision support [6] and eLearning [7] demonstrate that a good fit between tasks and digital technologies is able to improve performance of knowledge workers. This research reports the outcomes on the fit between task categorization and knowledge sharing systems. The task categories and Web 2.0 functions used in knowledge sharing practices were consistent. The outcomes highlighted that intuitive design, ease of use and a low learning curve were able to elicit both tacit and explicit organizational knowledge. Text analysis demonstrated that new knowledge was created, exchanged and shared. The study concluded that knowledge sharing activity and the fit between Web 2.0 functions and task categories were consistent and significant.

Interest in adopting new digital platforms among Malaysian companies to share, collaborate, crowd source and reuse (both internally and externally) knowledge has recently been on the rise. Challenges persist, however; organisational, people and technological factors are not always easily adapted in well-planned implementation strategies [1, 2, 3]. This research studied the implementation of Practice of Knowledge Management (POKM) that is currently used in an information technology (IT) shared services company. The research findings highlighted that the technological, people and organisational factors affect differently knowledge workers at the junior, middle and senior levels. The findings also highlighted that the POKM quality is stable and organisation of the content is rated well. However, POKM has a poor response time and search capability. Hence, the content is difficult to locate, but most participants agree that knowledge in the POKM is useful for their day-to-day job, accessible anytime and anywhere. The user interface of POKM is not very easy to use, with a weak set of functions and features. And users are not very satisfied with the efficiency and effectiveness of the systems. However, employees are satisfied with the ease of access, download and reuse of knowledge. Most users agree that POKM is a new knowledge acquisition enabler. Innovative ideas and tasks can be accomplished more efficiently. Lastly, users agree that POKM enables knowledge sharing and creation.

How do digital technologies support life transitions? This chapter will provide an overview, accommodating findings presented within the previous six chapters, and highlighting areas for future research. In this context, it is clear that different learning landscapes allow for different learning approaches and enable uses of sometimes specific digital technologies. In learning contexts, a “formal curriculum offers a core range of subject needs; the informal curriculum provides opportunities for these to be developed in another context and with the support or involvement of parents, family or friends; and the non-formal curriculum provides opportunities for young people to work in teams and groups on authentic problems and products” ([1], pp. 200-201). There are implications for developing effective uses in the future that relate to supporting learners in different life transitions. An analysis of individuals in a specific life transition, and the importance of uses of digital technologies and associated digital and soft skills in a learning setting will be offered.

This paper presents a pilot study conducted at the University Ca’ Foscari – Venice, in Italy, in which a group of pre-service secondary school teachers explored the use of digital storytelling through workshops. The aim of this study was to determine the key skills that teachers employ in the production of DS. To this end, the study investigated in detail: the stages of Digital Storytelling (DS) perceived as difficult; the key skills that teachers are able to develop in their use of DS; the obstacles that may prevent the use of DS in schools. Although teachers have recognized the positive value of DS on the pedagogical and educational levels, the sample shows some resistance to using it at school, not so much due to the lack of technical competence, but for institutional reasons such as time constraints, access to technical equipment and curriculum demands.

In today’s world of technology, integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into education has become crucial. However, without teachers’ genuine efforts, it does not seem possible to effectively integrate technology in classroom practice. Teachers’ positive attitude towards educational technologies is considered to be essential for the integration of technology into teaching and learning. Research has also shown that principals’ technology leadership could be correlated with teachers’ integration of educational technology into classroom teaching. This study aims to explore the effect of secondary school principals’ technological leadership on teachers’ attitude towards educational technology. Data regarding principals’ technology leadership were collected using the “Technology Leadership Scale” developed by Sincar in 2009, and data regarding teachers’ attitudes towards educational technology were collected using the “Attitude Towards Educational Technology Scale” developed by Pala in 2006. The statistical analysis has revealed that principals’ technological leadership had little effect on teachers’ positive attitude towards the use of educational technologies and did not have a significant effect on their negative attitude.

Social networks, like forums, friendship sites, music sharing sites etc., are gaining importance in a quickly changing world. They are also becoming a current issue on the agenda of an ‘education’ sector who wants to be harmonized with the changing world. Social networks which students admire make educators think about how a speedy, pervious and structured Internet could be used in an educational concept besides its entertaining aspect. Activating these features of social networks may clear away the obstacles of a knowledge sharing culture which originated from existing organization concerned with the individual and technology in educational organizations. This research aims at investigating which functions of Internet are preferred by educators and recommends what can be done to develop a knowledge sharing culture via social networks at school. Data have been gathered from 13 teachers via semi-structured and open-ended questions. The instrument used in this study was the interview. The data were coded and transformed into categories. The results showed that teachers mostly use the social networks Facebook, YouTube and Google+.

In this paper we will discuss the effects on schools in Victoria, Australia of use of the various school management systems provided by the Education Department, and the difference the use of this software has made to school operations. To better appreciate this, using a case study methodology, we will look at the use of these systems in a primary school in metropolitan Melbourne. The Victorian Education Department provides a raft of software for various administrative tasks in its schools and these are described in the paper. The goal of the paper, however, is to analyse the difference these management systems have made to the operation of the case study school and other schools in Victoria, compared with pre-computer manual systems.

This paper presents an analysis of a focus group discussion, which was carried out to collect information about the need, utility, and value that can be associated with the existence of an information service aimed to support educational leadership activities. The service intends to support leadership in monitoring and improvement of school performance and activities. To check the perceptions of school actors about the existence of this kind of service and to identify perspectives that would add value to the director’s community, three focus group discussions were held in three different Portuguese country regions (Algarve, Lisbon, and Porto). The groups were designed to include a maximum of six school directors that tend to be representative of each region. The duration of group discussions ranged from one hour and ten minutes to one hour and thirty minutes. To stimulate discussion, a roadmap with eleven questions was prepared. The group discussions were audio recorded, transcribed and analysed. This paper details the design and preparation of the focus group activities and presents a reflexive discussion on the data collected.

The recent incorporation of Spanish universities in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has produced fundamental changes. In a short period of time, universities have moved from a system focused on the professor and accumulating knowledge to one focused on the student and acquiring competencies. This new setting presents a challenge to educational managers about how to effectively organize the development of these types of competencies. One of the most important competencies for students’ preparation to enter the job market is the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT). This paper examines the key competencies in university education and their relationship with competencies in the use of ICT. To do so, first, two European studies are outlined, followed by one study at the national level, and finally a more local study is described. The results show that the socio-economic context determines to a certain degree which educational competencies must be developed in university education. Moreover, the ICT competencies are acquired more effectively if they are combined with other educational competencies valued by the job market. The study ends with a section on implications for the educational management of ICT.

The paper introduces an alternative method to analyze different learning styles among students. This method was developed as an alternative to more traditional methods such as hierarchical cluster analysis. The method was tested using a large data set (n = 868) which included participants completing a small e-module in addition to a small number of measures to assess learner characteristics. The resulting log files were analyzed using the new method. Results were similar to those observed using traditional methods. The method provides a new starting point for subsequent analysis and identification of learner differences using other information such as log files from e-learning and Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs).

Online Free School Meals (OFSM) was a transformational programme supported by the Department for Education (DfE) in England. The full process is documented by Strickley[1]. Whilst the use of the system can be judged an overwhelming success, most Local Authorities (LAs) have stopped short of the full web-based system in which parents can apply directly via an online form as a result of the perception of negligible cost benefits created by a lack of technical expertise, scarce resources and server and development costs. The paper describes how these issues were overcome by developing a generic cloud-based solution. The paper looks at the general structure of the solution and examines the experiences of three types of user: an academy consortium, a single school and a large LA to illustrate adoption, implementation, usage and benefits. It concludes that a cloud-based system is cost effective by removing much administration and as a result of lowering the stigma of applying can result in an increase in applications. This has resulted in financial advantages for schools and LAs.

With an ever-increasing measurement of pupil and school performance and presence of resultant statistical tables and indicators, parents are faced with a sometimes overwhelming plethora of data and information when monitoring the performance of their children’s present or prospective school. The authors are part of a company that has developed a parent/carer-accessible site to attempt to address issues and needs for parents/carers. Anecdotal evidence indicates that a single portal where parent/carers can find all the relevant data about schools in England would be an invaluable tool for monitoring and choosing a school. It was decided that such a site would be built around a National Single Indicator (NSI). The indicator is formed from an amalgam of expected progress measures: the main threshold level; pupils’ average points score; and the value added measure. By changing the weight attributed to each of these measures, the website allows parents to modify their relative importance according to the value they place on them. This dynamically alters the overall result to give users their own “personal indicator”, which means they can compare schools in a list tailored to their own specification.