e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies: Part 3 Corrections and Frameworks

In part two I started writing the description of a new e-learning course on "Green IT Strategies" for the ACS Computer Professional Education Program (CPE Program). My next task is to provide learning objectives and competencies based on the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) . The course and assessment then needs to be mapped out.

Corrections

David Lindley, Academic Principal of ACS Education, asked why I had titled the course "IT" (Information Technology) rather than the newer term ICT (Information and Communications Technology). It turns out that was a misunderstanding on my part, thinking IT was the term ACS used in its courses. So I have changed IT to ICT.

Chris Blackall pointed out I had duplicated one of the SFIA competences and had some useful suggestions for the content (covered in the next posting). We discussed this at a PPS (Purple Pickle Symposium).

One problem I had was the new Open Office 3.0 crashed about every third edit I did on my document. I suspect this is due to the mixture of HTML I had, from cutting and pasting my course outline document from several different sources. I attempted to report the problem but was unable to fathom the OOO error reporting system. To overcome the problem I cleaned the HTML with HTML Tidy.

One success I did have in terms of tools, is that I was able to install an Australian English dictionary and a Language Tool to check grammar, using the Open Office Extensions Facility. The spell checker in OOO underlines misspelling in red, whereas the grammar checker uses blue. The extension facility allows extra features to be easily added to the word processor.

While I was worrying about formatting details, I inserted a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License into the HTML and added a line to say this was a non approved draft, not a final document.

Learning Objectives and Frameworks

The seven learning objectives (as per Bloom's Taxonomy), I wrote were based on those from the ACS IT Service Management and Project Management subjects. David Lindley, liked the last of these:

Apply specific Green IT Strategies techniques such as impact analysis, estimation techniques, energy and material life cycle analysis;

He also suggested I look at the SFIA skill sets for SFIA Level 5 in the categories: Procurement & Management support and Strategy & planning. At this point I got a lost. SFIA is arranged by Category, Subcategory, Skill and then by level (starting from level 7 and going down). If you are looking for a particular level, this is difficult as you have to sift out all the other levels. David has produced a spreadsheet just for Level 5, to help, but there were so many cells in the table, it made my eyes water. I had put this to one side several days ago and then couldn't find it. Perhaps what is needed is a web based service which will extract a custom subset, as required.

From a web search I found the SFIA consultation web site, which has drafts of new versions and a slightly easier to read format. I extracted and adapted the Procurement & Management support and Strategy & planning categories from there:

SFIA Procurement & Management support and Strategy & planning categories

Category	Subcategory	Skill
Procurement & management support	Supply management	Procurement
		Supplier relationship management
	Quality management	Quality management
		Quality assurance
		Quality standards
		Compliance audit
		Safety assessment
	Resource management	Project office
		Asset management
		Information System co-ordination
		Client services management
		Professional development
		Resourcing
Strategy & planning	Information strategy	Information management
	Advice and guidance	Consultancy
		Technical specialism
	Business/IS strategy and planning	Research
		Innovation
		Business process improvement
		Strategic application of information systems
		Business risk management
		Information security
		Information assurance
	Technical strategy and planning	Systems architecture
		Emerging technology monitoring
		Continuity management
		Software development process improvement
		Network planning
		Methods and tools

What I need to do now is to go through each of these, and see if the skill sets for SFIA Level 5 are applicable. Then I can write a description of a learning outcome which corresponds, followed by a suitable assessment to measure it and then the course content for it.