“I” versus “WE”

Right about now, most students are busy at this moment going through their first and second interviews. Yes, just in case you do not realize, most IT positions are filled by Fall and most signed their offers before Thanksgiving before their graduation in May. A recruiter for a major company, who I immensely respect, once told me that students do not know how to interview. One of the things they don’t learn to do is to balance the amount of “I” versus “we” in their conversation. What does this mean? Too many “we’s” in your interview give signals that you are overly reliable on the team to get the work done while too many “I’s” indicate that you are not a team-player. So have a good balance of saying I’s versus we’s.

For example, you might say, we work on a project for Habitat for Humanity and I took the liberty to first organize the students meeting and during every project I tested the software or applications to ensure that the outcome for everything is as expected. Or you could say you created the user manual as part of the team project. In that way, the recruiters know from you that the team is needed for the success of the project while at the same time is also cognizant of your individual contribution to this success. When the recruiters see the amount of work that needed to be completed for a project, they know everyone needed to chip in. They just want to know where do you fit in. So next time, before you go to an interview, write down a bunch of experience where you want to relate with the “we” part and then a bunch of interesting stuff that you want to use the “I” part.

Do you have a good resume? It starts with the class project.

When you are interviewing for an IT job, you need to be able to tell the interviewer how you have prepared yourself for the internship or full-time position. I often get a chance to review students resume. I don’t claim to be the best person writing a resume, but the students do not make themselves sound interesting. Do you have talking points that are interesting? Your resume does not have to elaborate everything about a particular experience. It just needs to be interesting enough to entice the eyes of the interviewer to ask you more about that particular experience.

I would suggest after your sophomore year, you start and continue to build your resume. If at the beginning of your junior year and you have not added anything interesting to your resume, then you have to reflect and ask yourself what did you do this past year? Have you acquired any new technology skills? If so, indicate not just the computer skills, but how the skills are effectively used in a business setting or in decision-making.

That is why when you work on a real project for a client, it helps in building a talking point in your resume. The harder and less trivial the project, the more you can engage in a lively conversation with the recruiter. Your hard work in a project has unexpectedly more lasting effects than a simple trivial one that your team sets out to do originally. Therefore, it is important that you challenge yourself in any project. Again, recruiters are always looking for whether you are doing just the vanilla to get a passing grade or you push and venture yourself into uncharted territories, failing several times along the way but in the end, the project completed exceeded the objectives and your expectations.

What and how do you exactly write this experience on the resume? An excellent place to start is to examine the syllabus of the course. There will be methodologies and business terms included in the course objective that you can use to describe the project objectives, outcome and success factors. And be prepared to answer questions of what you learn about yourself throughout the project.

Are you taking more programming courses or do you like programming?

This is one of the questions that every business IT/MIS student might be facing during an interview someday. You hate programming and you don’t want them to think that you like programming that much that you will pursue a job. But you forgot an important part. This is actually not a question of whether they want to hire you as a programmer. If they really want to hire a programmer they would have pursued someone at the computer sciences or engineering school. You have a business background and possess hopefully some business acumen that they are looking for, yet why they ask you question relating to programming. You have to learn the answer the question without really answering the question. Depending on how much you like programming and I anticipate if you do you are a minority in the business school. For most, it would be something they would happily avoid. So, here is the approach you tell the recruiter, that programming is a challenge for you. Like most courses, you are not shy away from the challenge of programming and it is only an obstacle along your career path. In order to handle such difficulty you give yourself extra time to complete the assignments. You are the first to start the assignment or project and with some extra effort and work, it gets done well and on time. If you are a good student, this is probably what you have done in the first place so you didn’t lie about anything. You can also specifically say that you are working in an industry where technology is always changing. You want to send a message that in order for you to be successful, you need to be adaptable and learn new things often because of the rapid pace of technology change. This will send very good signals to the recruiters and hopefully you will get your second round of interviews or perhaps an offer.

Running a successful class in information technology (Part 3)

In the previous post I wrote about providing an environment that students can exhibit what they can do. It is like gymnastics. If you give them some basic tumbling routines to do, they will do just that. However, if you give them an environment that they can do a triple somersault, they will attempt to it. Some will attempt a double but others might do a quad.

Celebrate the end of the project.

This is the day when the class gets a chance to see what everybody has done. You go through the presentations, you have to praise each team of what they have accomplished and expressed your thanks to the class for taking their time to do the outstanding project. It will be good. You might get one or two substandard ones but if you follow the previous points, you can expect very good projects. In closing the course, you have to present a short 5-10 minutes of what the student have to go through to complete the class. Be blunt about it. If it was like fighting fire every week, acknowledge the fact that it is but at least the students know that you understand it was. Share the outstanding work done. Have some slides that the students can laugh about it whether it is about yourself or the students. In the end, you tell them if they can achieve this amount of work in a short time, they can take on other projects especially now that they discover their potential

Provide a mechanism for self-discovery

Before the students turn in their final project, ask the students to provide a reflection of the course. The students when asked to write their thoughts, reflect on the semester and realize that the skills that they acquired, how much they push themselves and the ability to complete the project beyond their imagination make them realize that the course was indeed an experience regardless of the grade they are about to receive at the end. Remember most students would have none of the skills that were going to be taught to them. Sometimes when you don’t ask them to reflect, all this is taken for granted  but when they reflect, they will positively feel that this is a class that has a lot of work but it is worth it in order to learn the materials. BINGO, the plan that you set out for the class has been successfully implemented and the best part the students appreciate it. You want to leave a legacy about the class that when other students take this class, there is a bond between those that have taken it. They will give this look to the new students of “you are taking the class, tough eh? but hang on you will be fine at the end”.

So here is the journey and tips to a successful course in information technology. At the end of the semester, you should feel like you impart your knowledge to the students. A part of me is sad that the students that I have enjoyed teaching the last 4 months have completed their coursework. I get a chance to see them go through the toughest times learning the subject matter. At times, I feel frustrated (because I cared) that my point did not go across in class but in the end, everything worked out when they do a wonderful job with the project. I am always pleasantly surprised and delighted with the learning outcome of the students.

Running a successful class in information technology (Part 2)

In the previous post, I emphasized the setup of a successful class and the level of expectations for the student.

Expect the students to complete an assignment from the first week.

Generally, it takes students up to 2 to 3 weeks before they get into the swing of things. I don’t wait that long. I give the student an assignment to be completed by the beginning of the second week. And keep doing weekly assignment for the first 6 to 8 weeks and accept no late assignments. In that way, the students are used to the routine that there is an assignment to be completed and they have already set a time aside a week to do the homework. I always explain to the students that the class is top heavy i.e. the students can expect to learn topics necessary to do their project up front so that they can be active participant of their team. Once they have mastered these topics, they will become a contributing member. The last one third of the semester, you can cover the book in terms of reading and not so much on methodology and tools. The only remaining thing that is due will only be the final project deliverable and final exam in the final month.

I believe in hard work. I remember as an undergraduate student in Computer Sciences (CS), every CS major knew that they had to space out three rigorous courses: compiler and programming language, operating systems and database. However the professors for these courses are some of the best in the department and I am proud to have learned some of their teaching and students evaluation styles. I remembered my nights at the CS building working way into the night and buying donuts from a nearby shop at 5 AM on Regents Street. Each of these classes is awfully tough and 20 years later I still remember those long days and nights. But at the end of the semester, as I looked back at the project that I had done, there was a sense of elation and pride in the amount of work that I completed under a ridiculous time frame. I wanted to bring this feeling to the students that I teach now hence the reasons why I introduced these elements to any course I teach.

Provide a project that is challenging with specific requirements and the level of expectations.

I think too many times, because we have other commitments for our career in academia, we tend to relax on the expectations and level of difficulty for the project. You will be amazed that some of your students really love the challenge of a tough project. They thrive on that sometime. Obviously they won’t tell you in class. I think when the project becomes overly simple and trivial, the students can gauge and know it and will not put in as much effort in the project as you like. I think back at all the projects I have graded. The tough projects are always done well and the easy trivial ones are the ones that are splattered with errors. I am sure this is shared with many of my colleagues in my area in other colleges. The project can be a semester project or a project for the last quarter of the semester. Expect each team to work close to 50-80 hours to finish this project. I know some of you must be thinking, the students do not have that much time. But if you think carefully in a team of 5 that means each contribute about 12-20 hours (spread out over a few days) allowing some overlapping time between team members.

Perhaps, if you have time, you should show the video of The Deep Dive, an ABC Nightline production. Students get rejuvenated and pumped up after watching this video about the process of creating a new product in IDEO under very strict dateline.

In the final post for this topic, I will talk about the closure of the project and the class in general.

Running a successful class in information technology (Part 1)

So your syllabus is planned, you have the textbooks, now is the time for you to execute the study plan in teaching a class in IT. My experience in teaching a successful IT classes always have the following elements: the setup, high expectations, rigor, challenge, celebration and self-discovery. I am going to write these tips in 3 different posts, so for some of you who is catching up on the blogs, you have to read this in reverse order i.e. the older posts first and the recent ones last.

The setup

You have to set the tone on the first day of class. You need to make a name tag for each of the students and give indications that you intend to know all the names by the end of the semester. This seems to give the same effects as the movie, Meet the Parents when Robert De Niro who uses his two fingers and point into his eyes and say they he is observing and focusing closely on Ben Stiller who intends to marry his daughter. The first thing I always tell all new incoming students to my course is that if they are taking a class and at any point of time do they not feel any anxiety, nervousness and uneasiness about any course, then the course really is not challenging enough for them and other than being required, why are they taking the class? I tell them that if they have to pay a lot of money for their education, they should expect me to work very hard so that they get the best of their money. I will truly provide a product that at the end of the semester, they will never think of it as a cupcake class. Every class sessions, with the name tags in place, you cold-call any student and you keep calling the next student until someone gets it right. If they make a mistake just move to the next student. This allows the student to feel safe about answering without worrying whether it is going to be correct. I assume that there is going to be some pride in each student and no one at this level wants to be wrong all the time.

Raise the expectations of the class to be very high

During the first day of class, you need to express your feelings that this class is a lot of work. If they do not have the time to devote to the class, now is the time to drop. (Most students would not drop the class just because you say it.) But it can be used as a reminder later in the semester and that they were told that there is quite a bit of work in the beginning. You do not accept any late assignment and you can write explicitly the number of assignments, quizzes, exams and project deliverables. More importantly, show them a project or two from the previous semester. It will be an eye-opening experience as the students will start to second guess themselves if they are in the right class.
However, here is where you have to be personal and said that this is doable if they work hard. You tell them that many students have completed and survived the course. That will calm the students down and indirectly they feel that if the previous students can get it done, they should be able to do so too. Tell them that when the going gets tough, you will be around to help. But they have to show you that they put in the effort.

Teach and they will come.

Teaching the introductory course in IT/MIS in the business school and watch the number of IT majors grow.

I have always found the introductory course to be the most challenging course to teach at any level. On one hand the students in the class are heterogeneous. If you treat this class as a basic terminology class, half the students would just fall asleep. What is the fun about learning the various terms? On the other hand you wonder if you engage them too much technical work (no programming), are you attempting an academic suicide or administrative nightmare as some might call it, where the students will revolt. Besides, most students really do not go to the business school to want to learn about computers. Those are for the engineers and the computer scientists. That is the last thing on their mind to pursue this as a major. During the .com years, there was a surge in the number of majors because many business students are attracted to the idea of starting their own company in the Internet. But the .com crash and parents have in many ways persuaded students to pursue other fields of business. Now is the time to reel them back in. The big question is how?

Since most business school requires students to take this class, this is the first plan of getting them back. Find a book that has around 12 chapters. Each week you will teach a chapter from that book and also provide something interesting from that book during that week. This will help with the terminology and the acquisition of knowledge. Alongside this class, I suggest that you require the students to find a project that they can build a database system. They can find projects at their work, social organizations (there are lots of them that need some database work) or student groups. They will perform some of the elements of systems development throughout the semester such as defining the problem, understand the business processes and activities, modeling the database model and eventually implementing the database. That means this class will also need to have a few more lectures that will focus on database development. Try not to cramp a whole semester of a senior elective class in database for them. That is not what this is about. Teach them enough so that they can independently create a system. I have these database help files and exercises that I have been using the last few years using Microsoft Access that you might find useful in delivering the database content. You, as the administrator of all the projects have to ensure that the projects do not get out of control. Many would argue with me that this is too much work and the students will hate the class. On the contrary, at the end of the semester, I find that most of the students realize their technology skill set has improved. They understand that the journey was very difficult but at the same time it is very rewarding to see the final product come together. The ability to work on a project and succeed under time constraint has huge benefits in learning. Better still, they get an internship because of the technology skills they acquired in the class put a stamp on the importance of the taking the class.

The project is run like a scaled-down systems analysis course. You need to have some kind of proper methodology to manage the projects. You want to engage students to be mini-consultants. This allows them to see the process of how systems development is done in the real world but in a smaller setting. I have many students that convert or add IT as a second major because they find this problem solving approach and creating solutions a very fulfilling exercise and probably a career. The experiential and service learning aspect of this is critical in the success of the class. The students will finally realize that the major is not all about programming. There are many roles during this consulting process that interest them. Isn’t this course supposed to expose them and give them a taste of a possible career path? Better still, get a few consultants to present to the class, it will reinforce their learning that their project is not just as classroom mini-exercise but is applicable to the real world.

Why should you declare Information Technology (IT) or Management Information Systems (MIS) as a major?

I have been teaching introduction to IT class for more than 3 years now and I have been successful on many occasions to ask students in the introductory class to consider IT as a major. Many of these students would never have considered IT as a major. Some even attest to me the fact that they are allergic to technology. Little did they know of their closet passion for IT. I continue to help open that closet and uncover some of these qualities found in these students and in some cases, convince them that they should consider pursuing IT as a second major. I have missed quite a few but I always try. I am proud to say that some have now worked in the IT industry for two years and have been very successful. The following are some of the things I look for in a student that are signs that they will be successful in an IT career and hence should consider pursuing IT as a second major or perhaps take more courses in IT to augment their coursework.

You are a perfectionist. You work on a project with a team. You are never satisfied with the product until it is turned in. Everything has to be just right or done better until all options are exhausted. You always wonder why some people cannot see why something in the project is just not right. Maybe it is the color, maybe it is the font size. Every small details count.

You are a good leader. To do well in this major, you have to lead many projects. You take risks in doing out of the ordinary. Just doing the vanilla is not good enough for you. You lead the team through uncharted territories. Also, you can work under the constraint of a deadline. Looking back you always wonder how you could do so much with so little time. And when you are done, the whole team celebrates. Even when the semester is over; your team is still intact as friends because all of you share this feeling of elation and success that you never felt before.

You enjoyed hard work and ultimately love to see the final product. This is not a major where you can loathe and get away with it. Everyone has to do the work. Otherwise, you will not meet the project objectives or outcome. It is rather embarrassing to present to a class with a project half done when your fellow classmates are able to complete it and complete it with style. There is no faking around it.

Ultimately, for every student in the business school, you need to know technology. It is nice to go to interviews whether you are marketing, finance or any major and tell them that you also have IT as your second major. The signals you give to the recruiters are that you like challenges and IT gives you the challenge. You are adaptable and you have a thirst for learning. Everyone knows IT majors have to do programming, yes, the dreaded programming course many students would happily avoid. But imagine yourself as a non-IT major taking a programming class. What does that tell the recruiter? It doesn’t say you are NUTZ. But it tells the recruiter that you have the “bring it on” attitude. They like that. They know that technology will always change and they want their workers to be adaptable and able to face these challenges that are unavoidable in any organization. Also, many of the skills you learned in the IT courses will be useful and will be immediately beneficial to you when you start your career.

Finally, the pay for IT/MIS starting salary ranks among the best for all majors. Most students would expect to make between $45K to $57K depending on whether you are working in Wisconsin or Illinois. Also, more than 80% of our May graduates were placed (defined as IT positions, graduate school or military service) by graduation and more than 92% were placed during the new academic year. There is a shortage of IT graduates, so if you do well in your courses, you will be highly sought after with multiple offers.

Finally, my first blog

Like most people, blogging has been on my mind for a while and I finally decide to create this blog about learning information technology. I guess the three people that motivated me and have been on my mind the last week or so were Stephan Spencer (netconcepts.com), Penelope Trunk (penelopetrunk.com) and Mark McGuire (jellyfish.com). I have been asking my students to start blogging and I guess I have to set an example for them too.

What to blog? I know getting a blog space is easy but what do I blog? That is the question that I think everyone deal with when they first start blogging. Will I blog something that is stupid and lame? I know I am good at teaching anything that is related to IT in the business school. I know my former students always ask me for help with the same topics covered in class. So that leads me to be here to start blogging. Blogging is more than just providing help files. It gives the students/users an understanding of what went through my mind when I create every piece of materials that they need. Like what Stephanie, my current student says, there has got to be a better way in doing many things. So I am going to use this blog to share any issues in learning IT topics. It is also a place for some of my former students to write about the topics and how helpful those can be and sharing their career path with my current students. Therefore, no more time to wait, and so here is my first blog.