Learning Through Simulated Information Technology Enterprises

This project involves a network of six community colleges, university experts, and industry leaders. During the project, they establish, pilot, assess, and document a contextual, collaborative process to better prepare technical workers for the information technologies service industry. Goals include alleviating the shortage of IT workers, improving technical and business skills and abilities of IT specialists, increasing entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial skills, and creating learning networks of faculty. The structure for contextual and systemic skills is "learning through a simulated information technology enterprise" (L-SITE), a realistic but fictitious enterprise that operates under varied conditions in each of the community colleges and represents the complexities and uncertainties of the real business world. The collaborative plans to design two different information technology service enterprises as templates for systemic learning for students in IT and other technical curricula. Using the two L-SITEs as "templates," student teams simulate business operations in a high performance context under the rapidly changing, global, and challenging transactional, technical, and market circumstances facing IT and other industries. Thus, students learn by "experiencing" various challenges and problems they may face in the real workplace. Each L-SITE is to be incorporated into the curriculum in each college in two basic formats: a year two practicum for IT degree students and experiential learning modules to be integrated into other courses and programs. In addition to the design network, five field test colleges prepare for subsequent adoption, and four international colleges provide global connections and experiences for the U.S. students and faculty.