IT education and the knowledge society: an Australian perspective

At the University of Canberra, we envision a society that has the capacity to act in a knowledgeable and responsible way that is continually enhanced by its sophisticated use of information technologies. In the School of Information Sciences and Engineering, we need to educate the IT professionals who facilitate such a society through the design of work practices, business processes and IT-based systems. In this paper, we present our understanding of the environment, the requirements of our clients, our new courses and our approaches to flexible learning. The primary requirement is to develop business analysts with the communication skills to bridge between software developers and business clients. We describe the new courses we designed to address this requirement and our approaches to flexible learning to support the needs of students.