The Easter period was a period to reflect on how Jesus died for us. It was also a chance for personal reflection. It is during such times that we connect with ourselves from our ever so busy schedules to just understand ourselves and our surroundings better.

This period reminded me of the so many times I wanted to quit — please don’t panic. I considered quitting campus so many times. It didn’t make so much sense being there but as I have said in a previous article, the dots shall connect.

It is always easy to state problems. We draw the line at giving solutions to these problems. Today I am giving solutions to what made me to consider quitting on those numerous occasions. So first of all, why did I want to quit?

When I joined campus, just like everyone else, I was excited for the journey ahead. Everyone who joins to take a degree in any computing course expects to be writing some code — like we see in movies. However, after a few lessons, the reality starts hitting you — you realize that we are here for the theory.

With time, you get used to it and it becomes part of you — attending classes and taking notes — only without any sense of direction. Why are we learning what we are learning? This question never gets answered or gets answered too late — I personally got the answer as late as in my last year. This is the reason, I considered quitting so many times. The reason why you consider is because you don’t feel like the classes are helping you in any way.

It’s now almost 2 years since I left school. Every passing day I realize just how well the curriculum was designed to help me in my every day job. However, just like so many others, it didn’t help me much — it could have done better. There’s a big gap in converting the academic content to some practical knowledge that you can use on your day to day job.

We covered a wide range of topics/units that have been used to design very powerful tools. I believe that the biggest challenge lies in the presentation of the content learnt in school. I remember when we learnt about Direct Acyclic Graphs(DAGs) for example. It didn’t make so much sense to me what I was going to use them for as a Computer Scientist. It is only recently that I discovered that Git is a Direct Acyclic Graph. If I knew this then, I would have viewed DAGs differently.

This explains why we are not part of the big discussions. It explains why are not taking part in the protocol design discussions, explains why we don’t create web servers and why are not taking part in evolution of the programming languages we enjoy using like Java, Python or even HTML. We are basically users of these systems. We take so much pride in using them. We’re not even critical of any shortcomings of these systems, we are happy to use them as they are.

So, the next question is whose fault is it that the curriculum is not working as expected. My simple answer is that it is a joint effort between these 3 categories of people

Students
Lecturers
Industry Experts

In the next section, I will be explaining what I think each of the categories needs to do to overcome this big problem.

Lecturers

These are the people who deliver the content to the students. The main challenge here is in the delivery of the content — I am very okay with the content.

We need to understand that we are delivering this content to a group that is not just supposed to understand it as is but is supposed to create something out of it. So this calls for a very good understanding of the applications of the specific concept.

There’s a challenge here because the responsibility of the delivery of this content might be in the wrong hands. There are scenarios where a unit is taught by borrowed resources — you have a lecturer from School of Mathematics teaching Discrete Mathematics in the School of Computing. This is a big challenge because the delivery will not be tailored for a Computing student but for a Mathematics student. These are very different groups of people.

My opinion is that we need to see more industry experts being involved in the tutoring process. These are the guys who understand what is needed in the market. If we can crack the balance between the two, this will be very beneficial. It doesn’t have to be on full time basis, just a few hours to bring a sense of direction would be helpful.

Students

The students need to have a mentality shift. We need to encourage a culture of creating amongst the students. Instead of being a framework user, we should strive to be the creators of the framework. We need to be part of the big discussions and that can only happen if we change our mindset.

We also need to develop a reading culture. It doesn’t end in the classroom. This is a rapidly evolving environment and we need to be ready to adapt. This means that we have to put in the hours to learn the new trends and keep up with the speed.

Industry Experts

The designers of the curriculum understood very well the critical role of this group. That is why the industrial attachment is a mandatory requirement for graduation.

However, there is room for improvement in this space. The industry experts can do more than just that. We need to have more and more engagement in the learning of the students. This is key in improving the conversion of academic knowledge into practical knowledge.

Campus tours are a good way to help the students. These talks help the students to appreciate that the knowledge they are acquiring will in some way help them in their day to day activities. Industry experts have a very big role in helping the students to connect the dots.

On the industrial attachments matter, we should make use of the short time to just have the students building at least one project from start to end. This will go a long way in helping them to connect the dots. This will be very helpful for them.

I believe that if the 3 groups work together, we will soon become creators of systems. We will also be able to take part in the big discussions. Let us create the magic.