| Abstract | ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS ARTICLE AND INTERVIEW
2. In terms of fostering future talent, what are the type of IT skill sets that enterprises are looking for
from fresh graduates?
Well, from the employers point of view, generally there are two type so skill sets that they seek – soft skills and technical skills. Soft skills entail general skills like effective communication, ability to work in teams, presentation skills and so on. These are in high demand irrespective of the industry. In terms of the technical skills, from the perspective of careers in Computer science/Computer Engineering or Information technology, skills in demand from a fresh graduate are programming, networking knowledge, web and mobile App development, software analysis and design, knowledge of Cloud computing, Data Analytics and Computer Security.
3. How have these demands of an evolving market impacted Middlesex University’s own curriculum in computer systems engineering?
It is not easy for curricula to keep with the changing pace of technological advancements and hence higher education institutions have to find a way to prepare students for what the industry requires and provide them with hands-on experience with the emerging technologies. Middlesex University Dubai’s Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics has, in order to produce ‘industry-ready” graduates, has established strong ties with the industry under which we are part of Academic Alliance programs with big tech names such as EMC-Dell, Cisco, IBM, Oracle and SAP which enables us to provide training to student on new technologies and also prepare them for various valuable certifications which really differentiates our students. Many of these courses are imparted as additional courses to the students, free of cost. However, wherever possible, we keep updating and upgrading our course content to incorporate the changes.
4. How would you characterise the concept of the digital workforce? How will they impact the work environment?
I am sure you have heard of So-Lo-Mo, which means Social, Location and Mobile. These three trends truly characterize our digital workforce and the digital landscape. We are living in the era of a mature Web 2.0, moving towards Web 3.0, the semantic web. We are no longer worried about storage of data or access or data; what we are faced with no is the overload of data, being able to sift through what is now termed as “Big Data” to be able to make sense out of all the raw data available to us. And to add another dimension to this, it is not just us, people generating content, now we have devices talking to each other and producing peta or Xeta bytes of data – the internet of things is here!
5. What IT trends do you believe will be driving the industry over the next few years and how will it impact the education of future IT professionals?
Without a doubt, the areas in demand are Mobile developers, Cloud architects, Data Scientists and Security Specialists. These areas have to be incorporated into the curricula and expose them while they are in University. But given how quickly new technologies are coming in the market, it is most important that we are able to prepare our graduates to develop the ability and the zeal to learn new things and nurture their creative and analytical thinking skills. |
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