Teaching advanced computing technologies to managers, engineers and other professionals

Context: Nowadays most businesses in Australia maintain a website to advertise their products and services and some to also conduct online sales and payments. Many have an additional Facebook page or utilise other on-line tools and phone apps. Data is now considered to be one of the most valuable assets of companies, and many are using Cloud services for safe storage and data processing. With the rapid growth of the volume and diversity of collected data, and its increasing importance for strategic planning, many businesses have started using big data analytics techniques to extract knowledge from data to support their decisions. All of the above technologies require formal security management or otherwise they can become a weak link which can create security vulnerabilities and expose company assets. While some of the computing tasks and their associated security can be outsourced to specialised IT companies, it is crucial that business managers and professionals have sufficient conceptual understanding of these topics in order to make quality decisions and ensure the survival of their business in the modern world. Purpose The question studied it this paper is how best to teach advanced computing technologies to business managers, engineers and other professionals with different prior experience and educational backgrounds. Approach: We describe a curriculum for teaching the most relevant computing technologies to professionals working in various branches of industry and business, mostly based on a Graduate Certificate in Advanced Computing Technologies for Business, currently being taught in an intensive weekend mode. A similar program could also be taught online with one intensive face-to-face session per course. Results: The limited analysis possible during the first run of the program indicates that the delivered courses were well-received by the students who have been able to successfully master the curriculum presented in an intensive weekend delivery mode. Conclusions: While virtually all Australian universities have programs for training IT professionals, apart for a few isolated courses, few universities provide opportunities for other graduates to learn the most relevant computing technologies. Such programs should be developed and included in engineering and business coursework Masters programs and made available to middle and senior business managers.