Can we teach (IT) competence?

This summer time has come with some positive news including what appears to be an increase in the number of job offers in the IT sector and some unexpected testimonials from my students about where they are working now: consulting, software development, and international relations among other things. Not only in the UK but also elsewhere, people are getting on with whatever challenges they face. Yes, life is hard, but it could be a good opportunity to learn and kick back.

Out of these news, and with a bit of time to reflect these days, I have been asking myself if we can teach competence. Why competence? Because it seems to make the difference between getting a good education and using it wisely. Competence is now an area of interest in fields like project management. In information technology competence aims to be 'measured' by the identification of different skills (or competencies) that people use to perform well in their jobs. This involves working on areas and problems which we are expected to be able to deal with, in other words to succeed.

If competence can be taught, we can then teach people basic knowledge of key areas, and help them develop their skills to work on those areas. We would be then selecting core elements of knowledge, and devising activities for students to engage practically into using these elements in addressing challenges, requirements and problems in such areas. Engagement would mean the use of skills like communication, problem solving, leadership, negotiation, planning and the like.

But there is something else I wish we could teach and reflect on. It is the willingness to engage, to try again, to appropriate problems as our own, to feel curiosity and passion about what we are engaging with. It is the attitude to life in general. We are all human beings, we have ups and downs, and this sort of attitude might come to our rescue or abandon us at times. It is this attitude to be realistic about life (it is hard!), and still engage with it. I am using here the word 'engage' heavily, because I think it makes the difference between learning and simply 'receiving'. My colleague and friend Andriani Piki has found that engagement plays a key role in how people decide to use technology to support their learning, and that those students who are engaged in learning have better marks as a result.

Can we teach engagement, can we develop it, and if so how?

From my experience I can only say that all we can do as tutors is to keep putting passion in what we teach. That helps. And if we feel we are not really engaged with what we teach, there might be little point in complaining if our students are not either.

The other thing is the openness to new things. Ideally we should all try to leave space in our minds for new ideas, and keep exploring, keep talking, imagining, and challenging what we know. For people like me it is not easy, as I am stubborn and slow to accept change. But I have my students which keep me on my toes.

These students have also taught me a lesson this summer: not to underestimate them. A couple of those 'quiet' came to graduation and when I asked them about what they were working on, I got the most amazing answers. They are doing fantastically well. Those quiet students which did not seem to engage at all. A nice surprise indeed.