IBM Delivers Resources to Help Educators Prepare Students for IT Jobs

ARMONK, NY - 03 Sep 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) announces today it is making its courseware and technical skill-building tools accessible free of charge to university faculty. These new resources will help them prepare for Fall semester IT and business courses as they expose students to in-demand IT job skills such as software development, enterprise systems management and business process modeling.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, jobs requiring science, engineering and technical training will increase 51 percent by the end of next year. The increase could lead to six million job openings that require a balanced mix of strong technical and business skills. IBM plans to help educators prepare students for the job surge by sharing its own resources to address this demand.

"Educational institutions today are challenged to keep abreast of the fast-changing, dynamic nature of work. This impacts both their ability to plan technology courses and deliver real-time teaching material to their students," said Kevin Faughnan, Director of IBM's Academic Initiative. "By opening up resources to faculty that were previously only available to partners and ISVs, they can now access on-line training on IBM technologies, allowing for enhanced education, at their own pace, on their own time."

Now available through IBM's Academic Initiative web site

• Teaching Business Process Management with Innov8 teaches the concepts and methodologies of Business Process Management using a 3D videogame simulation that bridges the gap in understanding between business leaders and IT teams in an organization. Innov8 fits well into the curricula of both undergraduate and graduate level business courses, as well as many computer science programs.
• Teaching Business Process Modeling helps professors both reinforce BPM concepts, provide a hands-on environment to elevate understanding, and develop new skills. Faculty can download WebSphere Business Modeler, an industry leading commercial tool that helps clients fully visualize, understand, and document business processes, at no cost or use a live WebSphere Business Modeler environment.
• Teaching with Rational Team Concert demonstrates how to enable real-time collaboration across a global software delivery team -- thereby improving productivity. Using IBM's Jazz platform, IBM Rational Team Concert includes Web dashboards to help software project teams see real-time project status data such as the status of work items and project health.
• Teaching Enterprise Systems introduces students to a wealth of opportunities in enterprise computing technologies, such as the System z mainframe which powers all 50 of the top 50 worldwide banks and 22 of the top 25 U.S. retailers. To help prepare students with the skills necessary for employment at IBM's top multinational customers, IBM offers an Enterprise roadmap which shows universities how to begin integrating IBM enterprise systems concepts and examples into their own curriculum.
• Course Mapping Guide: IBM has also published a new mapping guide for faculty on its Academic Initiative website that easily links IBM technologies and courseware to existing university courses recommended by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Association for Information Systems (AIS), and the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP).

Also available at no cost to faculty:

• Virtual Innovation Center for IBM Academic Initiative: The Virtual Innovation Center (VIC) is a complete resource for on-line training on IBM technologies. The VIC offers more than 800 on-line courses on over 45 software, hardware and services offerings. Previously only open to IBM Business Partners, the VIC is now available to IBM Academic Initiative members.
• Training Demos: No-cost demos available from IBM's developerWorks site can help faculty familiarize themselves with typical software development scenarios that map to IBM technologies in an easy to follow, guided Flash animation format. One of the demos describes how to build an online auction using the Rational Software Development Platform and Eclipse.

IBM's free resources will be implemented in the classroom this fall at San Jose State University. Assistant Professor Rich Burkhard plans to teach IBM's Innov8 game to 120 students in the school's MIS department as well as use Teaching With Business Process Management with Innov8 to help him maximize his students' experience and his own learning.

"Innov8 adds to SJSU's interests in increasing the focus on business services and service management -- skills that students today increasingly need to have to succeed in a global business environment," he said. "Getting students to understand and integrate the concepts of Business Process Modeling and collaborative software development can present many challenges. Innov8 will give us new ways to approach student learning of these subjects in ways that can increase student engagement. This is a truly interactive method that puts students in the driver's seat."

IBM's Kevin Faughnan and Dan Griffin talk to dW Podcasts about how educators can prepare for the growing skills demand in enterprise computing, BPM and software collaboration. Listen to the podcast here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int090208.mp3

Academic Initiative faculty members may access all of these resources at no cost by visiting: www.ibm.com/university/scholars/academicinitiative/

Video training and access to the Virtual Innovation Center can be found at: www.ibm.com/university/scholars/training/online.html

IBM Academic Initiative members may also participate in hands-on training sessions at any of its 40 IBM Innovation Centers worldwide. More information can be found at: www.ibm.com/partnerworld/innovationcenters

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