Successful Transformation of ICT Graduate Program: A Role Model for Developing Countries

Transcription

1 Successful Transformation of ICT Graduate Program: A Role Model for Developing Countries Prof Dr BS Chowdhry Former Director IICT & Dean Faculty of Electrical Electronics and Computer Engineering Mehran University of engineering and Technology Jamshoro - Pakistan bhawani.chowdhry@faculty.muet.edu.pk Abstract ICT has been one the priority areas for governments is Pakistan over past years and this period witnessed phenomenal growth in every sector related to ICT. This also includes post graduate education in the country which was much neglected in the past. This work presents such real case study where curriculum of postgraduate was set in away to generate huge interest, utilize expertise and resources of various departments under one umbrella creating inspiring atmosphere to attract good number of post graduate students. In addition a number of incentives were given to faculty members who helped in transforming young faculty and students in creating knowledge base in Information & Communication Technologies. This has become success story over the past 10 years at IICT. 1. Introduction The advent of present ICT era in Pakistan heralded the dawn of socioeconomic resurgence in Pakistan Higher Education, research and development constitute the engine that provides impetus to the promotion and sustenance of economic activity; which gets transformed into social and cultural development of any nation [1]. Mehran University of Engineering & Technology launched postgraduate program about three decades ago. These programs used to be called part time evening programmes for facilitating engineers working in industry, organizations, and its serving faculty to improve their qualification. Education has gone through major paradigm shift towards learning rather than teaching. Learning is no longer considered a process of transferring and distributing knowledge to the students. It is now regarded as a transformational process, whereby students acquire facts, principles, and theories, as conceptual tools for reasoning and problem solving in meaningful perspectives [2]. Our postgraduate directorate set criteria of minimum requirement of five students to start the postgraduate programme in particular discipline. Though university is located in central place where they got many power generation stations, power distribution 1

2 companies, telecommunication sector, more than thousand industries, small to medium enterprises within radius of 50 km ; it failed to attract minimum 05 students to continue with postgraduate programme. In year 2001, it was felt that to revise master program as per modern requirements and to make it more practical oriented since computer was no longer an alien species or something meant only for elite class. Moreover, a number of software tools including MATLAB, Mathematica, NS2, Opnet, and many others are available which may give good exposure to our students who graduated long time ago. Keeping all these factors in mind, an Institute of Information Technology (IIT) was formed which was later on renamed as Institute of Information & Communication Technologies (IICT). Interestingly, this establishment of IICT did not include any new physical infrastructure rather its goal was to utilize expertise and resources already present in various departments under the umbrella of IICT. Strategically targeted IICT has to focus on new model of education, research and development and commercialization of information, communication and advanced technologies. The challenging fields of ICT need creative and knowledgeable professionals committed to quality [3]. Thecurriculum was so designed keeping in mind to provide an opportunity to the students to acquire up-to-date technical knowledge; marketable skills, professional competences and valuable expertise in the rapidly changing field of Information Technology to ensure a prosperous future. The program need to produce graduates who will be flexible, adaptable to change, and able to face the challenges of technology driven employment market. Curriculum of following three new programme were designed keeping in mindtheory and practical aspects: - Masters in Communication Systems & Networks - Masters in Information Technology - Masters in Software Engineering 2. IICT Umbrella Following six departments commence under the Institute of Information & Communication Technologies (IICT): - Electronic Engineering Department - Computer Systems Engineering Department - Software Engineering Department - Telecommunication Engineering Department - Electrical Engineering Department - Biomedical Engineering Department - 2

3 2.1 Electronic Engineering Department It has been offering undergraduate degree B.Eng (Electronics) since This department offers postgraduate program in ME Electronic System Engineering under the umbrella of IICT. The department is equipped with number of laboratories out of which following are being utilized by IICT in the evening program: - - Advanced Electronic Engineering Laboratory - Microprocessor Applications & Embedded System Laboratory - Advanced Computer Application Laboratory - Top Quality Centralized Instrumentation Laboratory - EDA Tools Laboratory 2.2 Computer System Engineering Department It has been offering undergraduate degree B.Eng (Computer System) since This department offers postgraduate program in ME Communication Systems & Networks under the umbrella of IICT. This department is equipped with number of laboratories out of which following are being utilized by IICT in the evening program: - Microprocessor Applications Laboratory - Networking Laboratory\ - Computing Laboratory - Advanced Software Engineering Laboratory - Data Management & Internal Laboratory - Digital Image Processing Laboratory 2.3 Software Engineering Department It has been offering undergraduate degree B. Eng (Software) since This department offers postgraduate program in ME Software Engineering under the umbrella of IICT. The department is equipped with number of laboratories out of which following are being utilized by IICT in the evening program: - Parallel Programming and Cluster Computer Laboratory - Grid Research and Storage Management Laboratory - Software Quality Assurance and Testing Laboratory - Computational Linguistics and e-learning Laboratory - Visual Informatics and Image Processing Laboratory - 3d Modelling and Visualization Laboratory - Data Ware Housing and Management Laboratory 3

4 2.4 Telecommunication Engineering Department It has been offering undergraduate degree B. Eng (Telecommunication) since This department offers postgraduate program in ME Communication Systems & Networks under the umbrella of IICT. The department is equipped with number of laboratories out of which following are being utilized by IICT in the evening program: - Analog & Digital Communication Laboratory - Transmission & Switching Laboratory - Radio Communication Laboratory - Cellular Communication Laboratory - Protocol Design & Networking Laboratory - Fiber Optic Laboratory 2.5 Electrical Engineering Department It has been offering undergraduate degree B. Eng (Electrical) since The department offers postgraduate program ME in Electrical Power under the umbrella of IICT. The department is equipped with number of laboratories out of which following are being utilized by IICT in the evening program: - Measurements and Circuits Laboratory - Electrical Machines Laboratory - Power Electronics & Control Laboratory - Power System Laboratory - Calibration Laboratory 2.6 Biomedical Engineering Department It has been offering undergraduate degree B. Eng (Biomedical) since The department offers postgraduate program ME in Telemedicine &e-health System under the umbrella of IICT. The department is equipped with number of laboratories out of following which are being utilized by IICT in the evening program: - Telemedicine and e-health Laboratory - Biomedical Instrumentation Laboratory 4

5 3. Curriculum Design: All the academic programmes were designed to be conducted as full time in the evening to utilize existing resources of various departments brought under the umbrella of IICT. The full time evening program consists of four semesters (1- ½ year) for course work and research including pre-course studies of 6 weeks (Zero Semester). Each subject has been assigned credit hour for theory and practical as well. The minimum requirements for masters were set as course work of 30 credit hours and a thesis of 6 credit hours. Details are shown in Table-1. Salient Features of Curriculum are: (i) Zero Semester of pre course studies is common to all programmes. The purpose of Zero Semester was to bring fresh and previous graduates working in industry at par. (ii) Each semester is of 16 weeks and not more than 12 credit hours taken in one semester. (iii)there is only one subject in Final Semester and one must do thesis work in parallel in this semester. In this way student could not rum away and takes full interest in the thesis work. (iv) 75% attendance is mandatory to become eligible for examination. (v) Class test, presentation, assignments, cover 25% of marks where as 75% marks are based on final examination (External Examiner Based System). (vi) Every student has to do thesis work individually after the approval of initial research proposal by Advanced Studies and Research Board (ASRB). 4. Resource Sharing: As mentioned earlier, the formation of IICT without any additional infrastructure utilized the facilities and faculty of six departments. Due to this sharing, more than twenty highly qualified faculty members were able to teach in these programs. More over, due to their engagement in evening time teaching, a handsome amount in terms of remuneration was paid to these teachers. In those days more and more private sector institutions were coming up in the country and they were offering attractive salary to the highly qualified PhD faculty. Fortunately due to launch of these Masters Programs, highly qualified faculty members were compensated for their extrateaching hours, so they never thought of moving to the private sector. TABLE-1: Curriculum Design Chart 5

6 PROGRAMMES CREDIT Masters in Information Technology Masters in Communication Systems & Masters in Software Engineering HOURS ZERO FIRST Fundamentals of IT Signals & Systems Programming Concepts Digital Electronics & Computer Architecture Data Communication & Networking Advanced Operating System Advanced Microprocessor Systems Networks Fundamentals of IT Signals & Systems Programming Concepts Digital Electronics & Computer Architecture Data Communication & Networking Advanced Operating System Advanced Microprocessor Systems Fundamentals of IT Signals & Systems Programming Concepts Digital Electronics & Computer Architecture Data Communication & Networking Advanced Operating Systems Software Engineering Zero Zero Zero Zero SECOND Visual Programming Software Engineering Object Oriented Programming Digital Signal Processing Mobile & Wireless Communication Computer Vision Relational Database Manag. Systems Web Design &Development Object Oriented Programming THIRD FINAL Web Design & Development RDBMS Neural Networks E-Commerce Thesis Work Advanced. Comput. Networks Modern Trends in Telecom & Information Super Highway Neural Networks E-Commerce Thesis Work Human Computer Interaction Software Quality Assurance & Software Management Data Mining Concepts & Techniques E-Commerce Thesis Work Total Credit Hours 36 6

7 5. Multifold Benefits Towards Building the National Capacity in ICT This successful transformation of ICT graduate programs using resource sharing under the umbrella of IICT resulted into multifold benefits such as: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) Faculty members used to stay and work up to late evenings. Before this undergraduate classes used to finish at 2 pm, as such no one used to stay after this time and the university used to give deserted look in the afternoon. Better job opportunities for students due to improved qualification and knowledge. Faculty development: Mostly all the young faculty got registered in the Masters Program and improved their qualifications. More interaction with industry- as we got good number of candidates who come from industry to join this program. Development of strong research base and strengthening the national capacity. Availability of candidates for indigenous PhD. Majority of candidates offered PhD Scholarship abroad. Due to special incentives, highly qualified PhD faculty did not leave for private sector. (vii) Government expressed happiness and approved endowment fund: Each year 12 candidates were offered fully funded scholarship to do Masters under this program under ICT endowment scheme. (viii) Saving of Foreign Exchange: The expenses to do masters from any western country used to cost twenty times higher than produced indigenously. This saved huge foreign exchange. (ix) (x) Use of Internet, Digital Libraries and encouraging students to go through research articles in teaching made subjects more approachable and better comprehended by magnifying the canvas of classroom discourse and puts teacher in a position to understand the psychological side of students inabilities and failures. Due to success of these programmes three more programs have been launched. These include: 7

8 - ME in Telemedicine & E-Health Systems - ME in Electronic System Engineering - ME in Communication Engineering & Management (xi) (xii) Due to introduction of tutorial sessions and practical training component routine theory classes, empowered teachers to make a positive impact on their subject teaching. This enabled them to engage their students in reflective practice with a sense of inventiveness into what they learn. It was felt that the tutorial sessions also give autonomy to students in the classroom for better thinking and learning. These Masters Programmes fulfilled not only local or regional market needs but global as well. (xiii) Due to links with industry improved exchange in technical knowhowhas also been achieved. (xiv) The Institute has become like regional hub in ICT due to successes of such Master s Program. 6. Conclusions: The resource sharing under the umbrella of IICT, lead this directorateto become responsive, visionary and dynamic.timely establishment of IICT without any additional infrastructure by utilizing facilities of existing six independent departments played major role in producing quality graduates and faculty development as mostly all the young faculty got registered in the Master s Program and improved their qualifications. Once they completed masters, many of them got PhD scholarship offers which saved reasonable foreign component of the university budget. Additionally, due to the engagement of highly qualified faculty in the evening time teaching, a handsome amount in terms of remuneration was paid to these teachers which improved their socio economic condition and they did not leave the university tempted by private sector Institutions or lucrative offers from Middle East countries. We strongly feel that developing countries may apply this invigorating accomplishment as a role model using resource sharing and integration process for their successful transformation of ICT graduate programs. References: [1] Prof. Dr. Javed Laghari, Opening the borders of knowledge, Daily Dawn, Nov 23, 2010[2] Dr Faiq Bilal, Application of Information and Communication Technologies in Science education, Proc. Int. Conf. on the use of New Information Technologies in the Teaching of Science, page ,

9 [3] Prof. Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, Build a knowledge economy, Daily News, Nov 12,