Authors:
Ruben Tous
;
Felix Freitag
and
Josep Berral
Affiliation:
Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
Keyword(s):
Project Based Learning, Information Technology, Professional Skills, Curriculum Adaptation.
Abstract:
Amidst rapid and constant technological change, keeping IT higher education curricula up to date is becoming increasingly challenging. For a decade, the course ”Project on Information Technologies” within the undergraduate computer science studies offered by a major technical university has been pursuing an effort of continuous curriculum adaptation and active learning practices based on an open project-based learning (PBL) methodology. This article researches the implications of employing an open-ended PBL approach, with a specific focus on the alignment of acquired skills with the trends in the professional landscape. Our analysis has identified a strong correlation between the technologies utilized in the projects and the contemporary technological trends in the areas of global technological focus, programming languages, server-side technologies, database management systems, and DevOps-related tools. For the study, we analyzed empirical data gathered from over 100 projects involvi
ng more than 400 students who enrolled in this reference course, belonging to the last year of the IT higher education programme in the last 10 years. The results suggest the open project-based design as a teaching means in the student’s study plan for fostering the student the learning of prevailing current practical technologies.
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