[Year 12 IT Apps] What Future IT?

[Russell Edwards]

On 24/09/2007, at 7:00 PM, Cameron Bell wrote:

> Unfortunately the current assessment and VTAC admissions scheme  
> means that students tend to take a strategic approach to subject  
> selection. The ENTER score is the goal. While a few students have a  
> clear pathway mapped out and will chose subjects based on interest,  
> many aim to maximise the ENTER score, then see what courses they  
> qualify for (often making monumental errors of judgement as  
> evidenced by the drop-out rate in first year uni). Why would a  
> student take VCE IT if they felt they could get a better score by  
> taking say, history. There is nothing about having VCE IT as a pre- 
> requisite for ICT courses at the Uni's - they want English and  
> Maths Methods. (Does that say anything about the VCE courses or is  
> it that they want to make it as easy as possible to qualify?)  
> Students could well end up in well paying careers in IT without  
> taking it in Yr 11 or 12.

Well, that has been true for a long time. When I did my VCE in  
1992/3, we certainly had maximising our tertiary entrance score as  
the primary goal. Like all my computer geek friends, I actively  
avoided choosing VCE IT because it was boring!!  I then went on to do  
an hons degree in comp sci, another degree after that, and work for  
several years in science with strong software development component.  
To a 16-year-old who's been coding for half his or her life, spending  
a year looking at application software and business management jargon  
looks like a big and boring step backwards.

My impression is that the VCE IT subjects (apart from Software Dev? I  
have no experience of that) are not designed with the IT enthusiast  
(=future IT professional) in mind. Instead they are designed to give  
a grounding in IT to people who will end up working in other areas.   
This is the type of grounding that will help people work in  
environments that use ICT (i.e. just about everywhere, these days).   
It's not nearly deep enough to provide any significant level of  
preparation for an ICT career, and in fact I'd go so far as to say  
that anyone who didn't find it boring due to its simplicity is very  
likely, if they enroll in a uni IT course, to end up in the drop-out  
group you mention unless they are willing to work very hard at it.

hehe, I remember making a similar point last week on the yr7-10it  
list.  Must be navel-gazing season!!

So we may as well forget about "needing it" as a reason for choosing  
VCE IT. If we don't want it to go, it has to be made more interesting  
and/or easier.

Of course, the other option that should always be dispassionately  
considered, even though it's obviously uncomfortable for IT teachers,  
is that possibly it's fading as a VCE-level subject for good reason.

Russell