COMMUNICATION SKILLS

What Communication Skills are essential for a professional person working in Computing/ICT to be effective and successful?

What Communication Skills are essential for a professional person working in Computing/ICT to be effective and successful?

Introduction

There is a growing acceptance among academics, education policy-makers, and employer groups that the development of graduate skills is part of the role of higher education. Employers are seeking graduates with a range of knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal attributes in addition to degree status (B-HERT, 2002). What kind of skills, abilities, and attributes will define a successful graduate in today's global economy? Self-reliance skills appears to be the all encompassing answer to this question; it includes awareness of the changing world of work, taking responsibility for own career and personal development, and managing a good relationship with work and with learning throughout all stages of life. The development of self-reliance skills in students has always been a part of the educational process, albeit often in an implicit and informal way. This changed at the beginning of this century following the publication of the Nielsen report (ACNielsen, 2000).

Since the publication of the Nielsen report (ACNielsen, 2000), the majority of universities in Australia proceeded with the development of policy addressing the desired attributes of their graduates.

However, there appear to be differences between the findings revealed in the Nielsen report and the selection of the particular core generic skills included in university policy. The Nielsen report was concerned with employer satisfaction with graduate skills, many of which related more to the overall qualities expected of conscientious employees, than to the skills acquired by graduates from their study. This emphasis on general rather than discipline-specific graduate qualities was one challenge that had to be considered. Another challenge was to look beyond the current set of desirable skills, and identify future emerging skills and qualities, with a view to incorporating them in policy. Information technology skills and digital literacy is one such example. Even the Nielsen report acknowledged the increasing demand for ICT proficient graduates by a wide range of employers: In regard to course content, we found very few complaints by employers, except in regard to more advanced areas of information technology and electronic communication (ACNielsen, 2000, p. 9). And, commenting on the effect of the IT revolution on the legal services industry, Kift (2003) warned that to ignore it would be to ignore an essential part of undergraduate legal training (p. 12). She went on to say that:

The rapid development of information technology and electronic communication is pervasive and its impacts upon legal practice and professional formation still nascent. Potential developments extend beyond computer based learning and library resources to the wider use of artificial intelligence in the solution or prevention of legal problems. Law schools face the challenge of preparing graduates for a professional career in which such communication modes will be central and unremarkable. (Kift, 2003, p. 12) The issue of generic graduate skills is not new to tertiary ...