The Use of Industry Advisory Boards at Higher Education Institutions in Southern Africa

An Industry Advisory Board (IAB) can provide useful feedback to academic schools or departments, relating to topics such as industry graduate requirements, IT trends, programme quality and curriculum development. Though the existing literature already provides general guidelines for the role and responsibilities, membership, composition and functioning of IABs, literature on the use of IABs specifically in southern Africa is limited, especially as far as best practices and perspectives for the use of IABs for Computer Science (CS), Information Systems (IS) or related IT departments (IT) are concerned. Hence, the question addressed in this paper is: How are IABs used by CS/IS/IT/ICT departments in higher education in Southern Africa? An IAB questionnaire was compiled and sent to the Heads of Departments (HODs) of 32 universities in southern Africa. Accordingly, feedback received from IABs could have a direct impact on the ICT curricula and could also assist ICT lecturers in their efforts to update relevant course contents in a continuously changing computing environment. This paper might also help academic CS/IS/IT/ICT departments to implement and maintain IABs and to follow the standards of best practice.