Educating HCI Practitioners: Evaluating What Industry Needs and What Academia Delivers

Mary Czerwinski, Microsoft
Laurie P. Dringus, Nova Southeastern University
Andrew Sears, DePaul University
Barbara Bernal Thomas, Southern College of Technology

Sunday, April 14 and Monday morning, April 15

This workshop will explore issues in HCI education from an academic and industrial perspective. Our goal is to establish important topics and skills graduates do not have when they enter the HCI work force, as well as possible methods for conveying those skills in academic settings. From discussions with academic and industrial representatives, we hope to further broaden the communication channel between these groups. We hope to devise new strategies for industry to convey to academia their needs for competent HCI practitioners and for academia to effectively respond to these needs.

Goals:

Identify HCI skills and knowledge that industrial representatives must teach recent graduates.
Identify and discuss techniques academia can use to convey HCI issues to students to prepare them for industry work.

Each participant should submit a two- to three-page position paper and a biographical sketch. Academic representatives should describe skills or pieces of knowledge they feel are difficult to convey in their course(s). Industrial representatives should describe skills or pieces of knowledge they feel are not adequately covered in the academic process.

This one-and-a-half-day workshop is limited to 20 participants.

Contact

Barbara Bernal Thomas
Computer Science Department
Southern College of Technology
1100 S. Marietta Pkwy.
Marietta, Georgia  30060 USA
E-mail: bthomas@sct.edu
Tel: +1 770 528 7406
Fax: +1 770 528 5511

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