Professionalism and education

5.3 Professionalism and education

Many strategies currently exist for incorporating professional practice into the curriculum. Among the most common characteristics of these strategies are courses that help students strengthen their communication, problem-solving, and technical skills. CE programs could foster these skills in computing courses. Alternatively, programs in experiences outside computer engineering departments such as in a speech class from a communication department or a technical writing class in an English department. Accreditation bodies, however, usually require not only that students acquire these skills through either general education requirements or courses required specifically for computer engineering, but that they apply these skills in their later academic experiences.

The level of coverage assigned to professional practice varies depending on institutional commitment, departmental resources, and faculty interest. With the growing emphasis on professionalism in accreditation settings, it is likely that institutions will strengthen their commitment to teaching professional practice.

5.3.1 Special student experiences

The following list outlines several potential mechanisms for incorporating additional material on professional practice.

• Culminating Design Courses: These courses typically form a one- or two-semester sequence during a

student's final year. Usually, students must work in teams to design and implement projects. Often, those projects involve consideration of real-world issues including cost, safety, efficiency, and suitability for the intended user. Students could develop projects may be developed solely for the class, but may also involve other on- or off-campus clients. Although the emphasis of the course is on project work and student presentations, some material on intellectual property rights, copyrights, patents, law, and ethics may be included.

• Professionalism, Ethics, and Law Courses: These courses are one semester long and expose students to

issues of professional practice, ethical behavior, and computer law, geographical limits of the jurisdiction of different country courts. Topics included may be history of computing, impact of computers on society, computing careers, legal and ethical responsibilities, international Computer Laws and the computing profession.

• Practicum/Internship/Co-op Programs: These programs are sponsored by the institution (preferably) or department to allow students to have the opportunity to work in industry full- or part-time before

graduation. Having adequate administrative support for such programs is essential to their success. Students typically work during the summers and/or from one to three semesters while they are engaged in their four- year degree. The students who do a co-op or internship generally do so off- campus and so may interrupt their education for a summer or a semester. Students usually receive payment for their work, but in some cases may also receive course credit.

• Team-based Implementation Courses: These courses emphasize the process of CE system development and

typically include a team project. Course topics include development processes, project management, economics, risk management, requirements engineering, design, implementation, maintenance, software and hardware retirement, system quality assurance, ethics, and teamwork. Topic coverage is usually broad rather than in-depth.

• Entrepreneurial Innovation Courses: The computing industry needs disruptive innovation and major companies to provide new technologies and more job opportunities. This course discusses the basics every • Entrepreneurial Innovation Courses: The computing industry needs disruptive innovation and major companies to provide new technologies and more job opportunities. This course discusses the basics every

Many courses outside computer engineering departments can also help students to develop stronger professional practice. Such courses include, but are not limited to philosophical ethics, psychology, business management, economics, technical communications, and engineering design.

5.3.2 Administration, faculty, and student roles

At the highest institutional level, the administration must support faculty professional and departmental development activities. Such activities may include consulting work, professional society and community service, summer fellowships, obtaining certifications and professional licensure, achieving accreditation, forming industrial advisory boards with appropriate charters, establishing co-op/internship/practicum programs for course credit, and creating more liaisons with the private and public sectors. Such activities can be extremely time-consuming. They are, however, enormously valuable to both the individual and the institution, which must consider these activities in decisions of promotion and tenure.

Faculty and students can work together by jointly adopting, promoting, and enforcing ethical and professional behavior guidelines set by professional societies. Faculty should join professional societies and help to establish student chapters of those societies at their institutions. Through student chapters, faculty can give awards for significant achievement in course work, service to the community, or related professional activities. In addition, student chapters may provide a forum for working with potential employers and be instrumental in obtaining donations, speakers, and mentors from outside the institution.

5.3.3 Incorporating Professional Practice into the Curriculum

The incorporation of professional practice must be a conscious and proactive effort because much of the material blends into the fabric of existing curricula. For example, the introductory courses in the major can include discussion and assignments on the impact of computing and the internet on society and the importance of professional practice. As students progress into their second year courses, they can start to keep records of their work as a professional might do in the form of requirements, design, and test documents.

Additional material such as computer history, digital libraries, search techniques, techniques for tackling ill-defined problems, teamwork with individual accountability, real-life ethical issues, standards and guidelines, legal constraints and requirements, and the philosophical basis for ethical arguments may also appear either in a dedicated course or distributed throughout the curriculum. The distributed approach has the advantage of presenting this material in the context of a real application area. On the other hand, the distributed approach can be problematic in that teachers often minimize professional practice in the scramble to find adequate time for the technical material. Projects, however, may provide a natural outlet for much of this material particularly if faculty members can recruit external clients needing non-critical systems. When they engage in service-learning projects in the community or work with external clients, students begin to see the necessity for ethical behavior in very different terms. As a result, those students learn much more about ways to meet the needs of a client's ill-defined problem. However, no matter how teachers integrate professional practice into the curriculum, it is critical that they reinforce this material with exercises, projects, and exams.

For departments with sufficient flexibility in credit hours or with adequate numbers of faculty members and resources, courses dedicated to teaching professional practice may be appropriate. These courses include those in professional practice, ethics, and computer law, as well as senior capstone and other appropriate courses. Additionally, more advanced courses on web system economics, quality, safety, and security may be part of the experience. These courses could come from disciplines outside of computer engineering and they would still have a profound effect on the professional development of students.

The inclusion of professional ethics in a computing engineering curriculum is fundamental to the discipline. A listing of topics appears under the professional practice (CE-PFP) area as part of the body of knowledge for computer engineering (see Appendix A).

5.3.4 Professionalism and student experiences

Faculty members can promote professionalism by establishing an infrastructure in which student work falls under common standards that encourage its professional completion. The infrastructure may include the following elements.

• Reviewing assignments, projects, and exams for appropriate inclusion of professional practice material • Critically reviewing and establishing sound measurements (e.g., outcomes based) on student work to show student progress and improvement • Getting students involved in the review and evaluation process so that they obtain a better sense of the

process • Employing professionals in the private and public sectors to help assess student project work

• Using standardized tests to measure overall student progress • Conducting post-graduation surveys of alumni to see how well alumni thought their education prepared

them for their careers • Obtaining program accreditation to demonstrate compliance with certain education standards for professional practice • Synchronizing course labs with employer needs to make sure students learn job skills required by employers

The review and evaluation process should encourage students to employ good technical practice and high standards of integrity. It should discourage students from attempting to complete work without giving themselves enough time or in a haphazard manner such as starting and barely completing work the night before an assignment is due. The assessment process should hold students accountable on an individual basis even if they work collectively in a team. It should have a consistent set of measurements so students become accustomed to using them and they learn how to associate them with their progress.