The status of information technology education practices in Islamabad and Rawalpindi

Abstract

Information technology (IT) has gained a lot of importance these days. There is mushroom growth of IT institutes. Young generation believes that if they get educated in IT, they will get better job and better earning. In order to get better job and better earning the graduate must be of high quality .. It was found in many surveys that in Pakistan, out of total production of IT graduates only few percent graduates are selected in top soft ware houses because rest of the graduates are not capable of performing well. This indicates that there is some problem with IT institutes. In this survey we have tried to identify the status of information technology practices in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The key area of this study was to see how much infrastructure in IT technology is available in the universities. What is the condition of research and development and what is the standard of faculty and how much educational technology is used in IT institutes. This study is descriptive in nature. IT students and teachers are the respondent of this study. In generally, the results were not found to be very encouraging. Students were mostly dissatisfied with various computing facilitates such as restriction on various programs, poor quality of printers, internet speed, lab assistants performance etc. Students were also not very satisfied with teachers. According to them teachers mostly follow theoretical approach. They seldom provide guidance, feedback etc. Research and development activities were found inadequate. No formal research organization existed in any university. Students faced difficulties in access to concerned information. Mostly Research journal were not available. There is no financial support available for student to do research work. Most of the students want to join those IT fields which are related to software development. Students are also interested in networking and communication field. The teachers are found to have an average experience of 5 years. There is a shortage of PhD teachers in IT institutes. Most of the teachers in IT institute are not foreign qualified. On the basis of these findings various recommendations are made to universities such as, upgrading of internet, financial support to student, online research database and reliable space m server.