Title:	TEACHING PRE-ENGINEERING AT THE FOUNDATION PROGRAM
Author(s):	Hani Harbi
ISBN:	978-972-8924-58-4
Editors:	Miguel Baptista Nunes and Maggie McPherson (series editors: Piet Kommers, Pedro Isaías and Nian-Shing Chen)
Year:	2008
Edition:	V II, 2
Keywords:	Engineering education, Information and communication Technology
Type:	Reflection Paper
First Page:	200
Last Page:	204
Language:	English
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Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	Information and Communication Technology (ICT) influences the lives of everyone around the world. Almost every career now involves using ICT as a key requirement. In the increasingly dynamic employment market, students as future employees need to be able to work productively with ICT, to transfer their ICT skills across different contexts and software packages, and to keep their ICT skills up to date [4]. This is true for employees at all levels, whatever their responsibilities and the kinds of organization and environment in which they work. The global impact of ICT goes beyond the world of work. Yet the curriculum that is available to teach them these cutting-edge skills - such as developing software applications - is often textbook-based, uninspiring, and limited in its appeal to only one learning style. Developing Basic Applications Using Microsoft Visual Basic .NET uses a unique, game-like interface to appeal to students and engage them in the learning process. In addition, our University General Requirement Unit (UGRU) curriculum is still preliminary in its course content and does not prepare students to tackle college life courses when they graduate from UGRU. Therefore, it is essential to address these issues at the UGRU curriculum before students move on to their specific disciplines (at different university colleges). In this paper, we address some of these issues and compare the IT UGRU courses to those counterparts that exist in few Western Universities that have similar objectives. We conclude that our program has to be revamped in order to be competitive and prepare the students to succeed in their college years as well as in their life afterwards.
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