Teaching the Facebook Generation

A call for CT.

Our goal as college professors is to open students minds to new experiences so they can grow intellectually while they mature through the traditional four-year process. But we are also challenged to give students the immediate skills they will need once they graduate so that they can begin their professional careers and move away from the fry-o-later to the cubicle and beyond.

Over the past decade, there has been a sea change in the marketplace demands for graduates. Whereas broad skills used to be sufficient, now our students must demonstrate a set of concrete skills that not long ago were required only of those in highly technical majors. Nowhere has this change created a greater shift than in fields such as marketing and public relations, which traditionally have been viewed as nontechnical but are now demanding a technological competency that is astounding.

The rest of the article can be found here.

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2 comments:

  1. Phil Tierney Says:

    What a great example of a discipline acknowledging it's dependence on computational thinking knowledge and skills. Her BW essay clearly lays out a map for her subject area.

    Brain dropping: I think Elaine be a great person to hold another dialogue with. Maybe invite several FLC & CSUS faculty to participate. As a program element. we could further this discussion about traditional curricula exposing CT dependencies with a podcast series (doesn't necessarily have to be video...audio only works fine).

  2. Phil Tierney Says:

    Have been thinking more about this post and went back to the original Business Week article. The comments to that article pretty much make the business case for the importance of what our CPATH II team is taking on. Interestingly enough, the comments also point out that
    - graduates clearly missed out on skills acquisition in their formal schooling
    - and that employers are throwing anyone who looks like they might know how to use an iphone at real business problems

    This is an indictment and an opportunity...people will get on this bus and maybe even stand in line...