Equipping Graduates for the 21st Century Workplace: What IT Competencies Matter Most to Stakeholders

IT University Innopolis is a newly established IT university in Kazan, Russia, with the mission to foster innovation in order to address critical scientific, technological and innovation challenges and gaps facing Russia and the world IT industry. The education system is designed to foster in its graduates qualities that are needed in the modern, rapidly changing world. The University proposed a comprehensive framework of competencies to be developed in its graduates. As a reference framework for competencies we used ABET, CDIO Syllabus, and results of the recent study conducted among stakeholders including those in Russia. Here we intend to understand how different stakeholders at different stages of their life and career perceive the relative importance of competencies. In order to answer this question we have conducted an extensive online survey including three groups of stakeholders: highschool pupils intending to study IT, undergraduate students pursuing a degree in IT, and professionals working in IT. By high-school pupils intending to study IT we mean those who attend extra-curriculum classes outside school, thus demonstrating special interest in IT, and reported their wish to pursue a degree in IT in future. A supplementary education company Unium provided this data. The results show consistent replies among the groups that participated in the online survey and some discrepancy with the feedback from stakeholders interviewed in the previous study, namely top management stakeholders, who placed a stronger emphasis on disciplinary knowledge, team work and communication skills, than did employers, students and high-school pupils respondents. The results of this study will be used to educate students about the expectations of the employers regarding their competencies, to tailor the university courses, and to implement soft-skills components in the supplementary STEM courses for high-school students. Background The society of the 21st century experiences a rapid transition to the age of information. This new model requires human resources of a new kind – trained professionals able to use knowledge and technology in the most efficient manner. New challenges brought by developing technologies demand increased knowledge and non-traditional ways of thinking, and education that helps to address varied and complex problems. According to a study done at Oregon State University (2006), competencies represent knowledge and skills required for performing and supporting business processes. At the same time they serve as the basis for creating value in an organization. Other researchers state that competency is “the ability to meet individual or social demands successfully, or to carry out an activity or task. Each competence is built on a combination of interrelated cognitive and practical skills, knowledge (including tacit knowledge), motivation, value orientation, attitudes, emotions, and other social and behavioral components that together can be mobilized for effective action”. Modern society in general needs to be more competent than it was in the previous decades when means of processing information were traditional and did not imply total automation. Some researchers argue that training techniques or literacy of individuals in multiple languages and codes that information employs (textual, iconic, hypertextual, audiovisual, multimedia, etc.), should be a recurring, continuing goal throughout the education system as a whole, from primary education to higher education. In addition, international organizations have focused their attention both on the development of advanced curricula and instruction in general. This has been reflected in several projects supported by UNESCO and OECD. One such project, called “DeSeCo” (Determination and Selection of Competencies), had published a number of research papers in the 2000s which lay a theoretical foundation for the new understanding of the concept of competencies in education and in the IT industry. In the 1960s, when modern computer science degrees originated in their current form, competencies as a reference for education were formulated in the area of vocational or occupational training, closely linked to the processes of in-company training and technological training in educational institutions. However, over the years, most traits of competencies have been incorporated into the institutions that train professionals; this practice is much more inclusive, and not limited to the technical area. Besides promoting the development of certain attributes (skills, knowledge, attitudes, aptitudes and values), it was felt that the design of training should consider the need to intervene within the context and the culture of the workplace. At the same time, it should allow for training in specific contexts to be generalizable. Innopolis University has identified a set of key competencies necessary for graduates in IT specialties. These competencies are in agreement with the IT competencies used by the International Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology and reflect the opinion of the stakeholders in Russia and abroad. The list of competencies is presented in Appendix I. Methodology In the earlier study we interviewed top managers of IT companies, government officials, and prominent academicians in order to understand what competencies are most important for University graduates to demonstrate in order to be successful. In this study we have conducted an online survey among high-school pupils interested in entering IT careers, students of IT specialties, and IT professionals. Figure 1 shows the diagram of groups of stakeholders involved in the survey. The respondents were asked to grade the importance of IT competencies on the scale: 1 Not Important, 2 – Moderately Important, 3 – Important, 4 – Highly Important, 5 – Essential. In addition to the online anonymous survey we conducted a set of interviews with selected representatives from each group. The questionnaire has been split into three blocks: 1. Information about current occupation and work experience 2. Grading IT competencies 3. Information on gender, age group, country of birth, country of study, and country of current occupation Respondents were not allowed to start grading IT competencies before answering questions in section 1, however they were allowed to omit section 3. Therefore data on age group and geographical details is lacking for 6.4% of responses. In total we received over 1600 responses. 980 were complete questionnaires, i.e. sections 1, 2 are complete and section 3 partially completed. We filtered out obviously fake responses. 980 responses include 68 from high-school pupils, 178 from students, 696 from professionals without international experience, and 38 from professionals with international experience. Figure 1. Diagram of stakeholders involved in the study. Legend: green – participant of earlier study, blue – participants of the current study. How critical are the respondents? Here we report mean grades of IT competencies by stakeholders. Therefore it is important to understand how critical the respondents are in their judgment. Figure 2 represents distribution of the grades in percentage of overall grades. Overall 1% of responses were 1 – Not Important, 6% were 2 – Moderately Important, 19% 3 – Important, 35% 4 – Highly Important, and 39% 5 – Essential. Age distribution of the respondents. Figure 3 shows the distribution of the respondents by age group. This graph covers those respondents who specified their age group – 93% of the total respondents. Here we see that the most active group of the respondents corresponds to the age of 23-26 years old – young IT professionals. Very likely this reflects the presence of the group in the online professional communities that we have used to advertise our survey. Results Figure 1 Appendix II illustrates the main result of the survey – the relative importance of IT competencies perceived by different groups of stakeholders. Here we present the results, together with the data obtained in the earlier study, in which we interviewed the following groups of stakeholders: senior representatives from academia, top management from the industry, and senior representatives of government from Russia, EU and USA. IT Competencies Industry (top management)