For Business and Computer Programming Professors

Join Teachers.Net

Chatboards

Recent Groups

Professors

MEMBERS

2 Members

+ Join Group

Pinned Posts

ALLAll Teachers

Teachers.Net LIVE CHAT Support group - Tues eve!

Featured Jobs

Full-timeMontessori Teacher

Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada

TemporaryTeachers, rural schools

Peace River North School District

Full-timeHead Teacher: 2nd/3rd Grades – Mills College Children’s School

Mills College

Teaching Jobs on Teachers.Net

Featured Job special only $39!

https://teachers.net/jobs

Become a Teachers.Net sponsor!

College Professors Chatboard

For Business and Computer Programming Professors

by Hannah Mahon

Sep 16, 2013

My name is Hannah Mahon, and I'm a writer for an online magazine that attempts to educate college students about certain trends and events going on in the world today. One of the articles I am writing about concerns the recent popularity in the programming major, and I am attempting to generate some reasons behind this as well as look at what that will mean for the business world.

So, my three questions for both teachers of programming and business are as follows: (1) Are students going into programming because it's an important business skill? (2) Is this major gaining popularity among non computer engineer types because of the changes in the job market? (3) What effect could a generation of programming students have on the economy and the business world of tomorrow?

Thank you so much for your input (in advance), it's incredibly difficult to find people who are willing to contribute.

Comment

(2)

report post

marjoryt Computer concepts has been the traditional freshman level course that teaches students how a computer operates plus the MSOffice suite.

MANY college majors no longer require this course for graduation. These colleges assume the students know the information.

I'd like to differ. Students have their computer discover class in the 7t...See More

Sep 21, 2013

report post

Engineering Prof. Wife From the perspective of engineering, my husband has spent his career being sure he prepared American undergrads for the 21st century in the engineering field he teaches. And "for him" t least this meant knowing more than just the MS Office Suite, emailing, texting, and whatever other social media stuff the college students can occupy themselves wit...See MoreFrom the perspective of engineering, my husband has spent his career being sure he prepared American undergrads for the 21st century in the engineering field he teaches. And "for him" t least this meant knowing more than just the MS Office Suite, emailing, texting, and whatever other social media stuff the college students can occupy themselves with during class.

He did this by having them learn not just how to run a commercial software package or learning a computer language in and of itself such as JAVA, but using computer applications to understand the underlying principals of an engineering field with such things as Visual Basics for Applications and Excel. These are real world business skills that his students have told them have served them well in places as diverse as financial institutions - visualizing the market trends and fluctuations as well as aerospace and aircraft designs.

Computer scientists would still like to say that only a "computer" person can program. However, what he says is that you can't really get the essence of a field if one is simply "programming" but does not have the technical background to understand what and why they are programming a specific concept etc.

The push in colleges today is to do as little as possible in terms of teaching undergraduates so that one will have time to spend on one's own research - which generates overhead for the universities - and if one must teach modern computer skills then for heaven sakes spend the time with your graduate students who can help you out (and a very large majority of them are foreign students.) And one wonders why we are falling behind as a nation in the science and engineering fields. Interest in undergraduate education is not at the top of the promotion and tenure committee nor pay raise grid.

On 9/16/13, Hannah Mahon wrote: > My name is Hannah Mahon, and I'm a writer for an online > magazine that attempts to educate college students about > certain trends and events going on in the world today. One > of the articles I am writing about concerns the recent > popularity in the programming major, and I am attempting to > generate some reasons behind this as well as look at what > that will mean for the business world. > > So, my three questions for both teachers of programming and > business are as follows: (1) Are students going into > programming because it's an important business skill? (2) > Is this major gaining popularity among non computer > engineer types because of the changes in the job market? > (3) What effect could a generation of programming students > have on the economy and the business world of tomorrow? > > Thank you so much for your input (in advance), it's > incredibly difficult to find people who are willing to > contribute.

Sep 23, 2013

report post