Koen Schram
Head Department Applied Informatics Karel de Grote-Hogeschool (University College)
Member since 2004
ADM: information and inspiration for higher education
As a lecturer in IT, I find it extremely important to keep my finger on the pulse. It is our job to prepare “professional bachelor” graduates for the real world and our educational activities must be geared to providing good solutions for achieving this. To know how the real world works – basically, how companies deal with IT – you need to do more than just browse through technical journals. You also need your own story diggers from the business. Their input helps us bring our students more in line with the real world and to include specific developments in the curriculum. ADM is one of my main sources for this input.
Right from the very first working group that I attended, I discovered that what is important is not just the information in the working group, but also the network surrounding it. For us, the things that are said in passing at such sessions are especially valuable.
So I get my stuff from the many ADM working groups that I attend and I rework the information into the curriculum. Recently I attended various sessions of the service management working group, because there I can find out what is currently keeping managers awake at night. Also, ADM often publishes a summary afterwards in a white or blue paper, which I then include in my lectures. For example, I still use the blue paper about ICT architectures because of its useful practical examples. In the education world we are also observers. If the people at ADM tell us that certain technologies, methods or various systems are not used or hardly used at all, then we will not teach these things in detail.
Our training also tries to make an educated guess about what companies will be working on in the future, because we have to take into account the time lag between studies and working in the real world. ADM is a networking organisation and so it brings me into contact with the forerunners or visionaries in the job market. So for instance, this way I find interesting guest lecturers. In particular, these speakers are often busy working on the challenges of tomorrow, so my students should not treat the information dogmatically. Still, I want to provide my students with this information. After all, what we have to take into account in education is that the jobs our students will be doing in 15 years’ time do not yet exist. In a way, ADM still gives us a glimpse into the future. And if there is anything that students should have learned – besides their course – it is to network.