https://www.fhstp.ac.at/de/studium-weiterbildung/informatik-security You'll need to translate some of the pages.
"The Fachhochschule St. Pölten stands for high-quality higher education, practical relevance and internationality." St. Pölten is about 75km away and I train on the public transport system which is brilliant. The return train was high speed and covered the 75km in 35min including time for a few stops.
https://www.google.de/maps/@48.1906884,15.9635751,10.25z?hl=en
Christoph Lang-Muhr, Researcher and ICT lecturer <clangmuhr@fhstp.ac.at>
Simon Tjoa, ICT lecturer and International coordinator, <stjoa@fhstp.ac.at>
Discssion Points:
We started by discussing how they promote ICT courses to potential students through the schools:
- Every year they do a project week with local schools plus about 1-2 promotional info days per year where about 500 students attend from local schools (St Polten is close enough to Vienna that some students commute by train)
- Short workshops during the year with course and career information for IT careers. Specific to there courses
- They run open lectures on ICT topics
- They run general Open days 3-4 times per year with broad course information on the University as a whole
- In the past some school teachers were biased towards academic universities, this is becoming less as the Applied Science Universities are ranking higher in the educational rankings.
- Simon is also teaching at University of Vienna, this also helps to break down biases about the quality of education with personal knowledge from someone they know and trust.
- I talked to them about both Dan and Daryl teaching for CSU and how this is helping to build relationships
- They try to target students at 16-19 yo students when they are thinking actively about careers
- Bachelor of ICT runs over 3 years (6 semesters)
- Bachelor of ICT runs over 2 years (4 semesters)
- In general courses start with general core subjects of studies then branch of to one of the areas of specialist subjects in their last year
- They've just started a new Masters program targeting students already in the workforce - Online for Wed and Thu 6-9pm via Adobe connect sessions then F2F sessions Friday and Saturday. They also do 1 intensive week per semester 9-5 all day.
- Masters students choose some research projects as well as class work. One semester is research based and the rest are lecture based
- Students have to go though an entrance exam to get a seat, IT is still very popular with more applicants than spots,
- They are funded for a number of students, more us done for free and less may attract a price disadvantage
- Students pay 500 euro per Sem for each student eg $3000 euro for a degree, social disadvantaged students get a discount
Work placements - Internships
- Internship - 1 FT block of 3-6 mths of workplace total out of 3 yrs in the 5th semester. 2 yrs for the master
- It is the students responsibility to find an employer for a work placement, The Institute provides a database of employers and keeps track of the past work placements and how they went. This helps students to choose an employer that suites them.
- Employers like the work placement program as the students already have some experience by the time they come and it is a good way of testing out potential future employees
Student Feedback Systems
- After lots of experimenting (same as us) they have settled on a very simple survey tool that is applied to every subject as soon as students finish - traffic lights - single satisfaction question but room for comments. Simple and fast feedback, they can analyse the text responses to fine tune the results.
- They also run a student feedback system where student representatives meet with the Dept head and teachers 2-3 times per year
- Staff are very open to feedback and will take any opportunity to listen to students
Collaboration
- Erasmus+ exchange system is very popular with both teachers and students
- ePale - They didn't recognise this site but I will confirm later by email
- Cedefop - They didn't recognise this site but I will confirm later by email
- They collaborate through IT Security Xchange ITSecx
- They have a new relationship with Pen State Uni that is not formalised but a good source of collaboration
- Simon is the IT rep to the international relations
- They are always looking for English speaking countries for international exchanges
- They invite external assessors to run certification exams eg ITIL
- They often have guest speakers with specific industry expertise
- Easy to maintain business relationships and partnerships, Most of the IT companies are in Vienna which is less than 1hr away
- Relationships between schools, VET Colleges and Uni (AppSci) seem to be very good, no sign of any bias or stigma
- They seem to have very positive relationships with partners and even competing institutions.
Recognition is commonplace.
- Some agreed RPL based on a recognised qual CCNA, TGM,
- Work skills, the teacher assesses then makes a recommendation to the head teacher to make the final judgement
- If not sure they will give them a test
Assessment
- Teachers are the assessors but their judgement is based on class and workplace evidence
- Students do a presentation with examples from their work place
- Occasionally they do a panel marking of a major project presentation
General notes
- Funded by the government for a Bach course 30 FT students plus 15 workplace students(stretched over a bit more time)
- 30 ft students are govt funded, 50 workplace students are funded. They limit enrolments as they don't get extra funding after they hit their cap
- The teacher writes assessment and tweaks every year, no formal Validation process except it will be analysed if it gets negative feedback in the surveys
- The study program adapts every 3-5 yrs
- They offer a range of industry certifications that are aligned but not mandatory, the students choose to sit the exam or not. There is a Pearson Vue test centre in St Polten and Vienna
- Certifications - Cisco, Barracuda, fortenet, Checkpoint,
- Employers are all looking for different skills, Uni, VET, Ind Certs. Same as Australia
- Taxes in Austria 45-50 percent of wages but free medical and cheaper education
- Students can work for approx 4 years then start a course and draw a welfare payment while they study.
- IT security is a growing field
- If students work for eg 4 yrs then they can start study and get a welfare payments likes grants to help them while they study
- The institute has new facilities - only 5 yrs old
- Experimenting with room layouts to get away from classroom layouts
- The Media production studio was very advanced with lighting systems and remote controlled cameras
- Girls are about 20% of enrolments in IT but much higher in other course areas
- Job outcomes for students are very good
- They were very interested in our Integrated ITPathway program and also our use of Moodle
- Trying to redesign courses - how to integrate social competences (like our foundations) to their courses. How do we objectively grade them. Eg communication, presentations, team work.
They are about double our size so have a correspondingly bigger infrastructure in their server room. They have similar management practices to us and they encourage their students to get involved with the management of the servers and networking equipment.
They run Linux Unbuntu as a standard networking lab PC but I noticed that many students had their own devices that they were free to connect either wirelessly or by cable
They are starting to experiment with different classroom layouts. We spent a lot of time discussing our Riverina IT lab layouts.
They have the same "open access" approach that we do, students are free to come and study whenever space is available. They even claim to have 24hr access although I didn't get a chance to question how this works from a security point of view.
The buildings and grounds were very modern (5 yrs) and had several parks around them. It is only a 12min walk to the main train station then 30-50mins back to Vienna. It is a very attractive environmnet.
No comments:
Post a Comment