IBM Innovation Center for Education: Building IT skills for the future
Have you heard about the IBM Innovation Center for Education?
The Innovation Center for Education is a collaborative project between IBM and numerous universities and engineering colleges around the world that’s designed to offer industry-aligned skills training for students.
According to a recent executive report from the IBM Institute for Business Value, 60 percent of executives are struggling to keep workforce skills current, and technology capabilities remain the most critical skill area. We are living in a digital world that is quickly changing, where newer skills are essential for business success, and training needs to be a strategic investment by organizations. The IBM Innovation Center for Education was launched to help address this challenge directly.
Equipping the next generation of IT professionals in Malaysia
As part of the Innovation Center for Education’s global program, IBM recently partnered with INTI International University and Colleges in Malaysia to introduce a series of undergraduate programs and academic courses in computing, IT and business programs. These programs will include courses focused on digital literacy skills, such as:
- Business analytics
- IT infrastructure
- Web programming through PHP cloud computing
- Social, web and mobile analytics
- Big data
- Mobile app development
Like many countries around the world, Malaysia is facing strong demand for talent in the field of big data, cloud services and social computing. For example, the country is looking to rapidly grow its number of data scientists in the next few years from 300 to about 2,000. The initiative by IBM and INTI aims to address that need. Collaboration between an industry leader like IBM and a higher education institution will help to prepare Malaysia to bridge the IT skills gap.
Cutting-edge IT skill building
The IBM Innovation Center for Education is designing a training delivery framework that will make learning productive by using proven methods of collaboration, mentorship and project-based education. Students can stay connected to the industry through mentoring, discussion forums moderated by experts, SME visits and live webinars with industry professionals. Theoretical knowledge will be coupled with real project experience to deliver cutting-edge education that will help prepare future generations to meet industry skills needs.
IBM Training programs like this one are currently operating in Malaysia and India, with over 5,000 students reached since the program began. The Innovation Center for Education is aiming to continue its expansion worldwide in the coming years.
Where to learn more
The IBM Innovation Center for Education is part of IBM Systems Lab Services, an organization of IT consultants with the proven expertise to help leading businesses design, build and deliver IT infrastructure for the cognitive era. Technical training initiatives like the Innovation Center for Education contribute to a larger effort to maximize market skills by equipping future IT professionals.
To read more about the importance of skills initiatives like these, please see my previous blog post, “Increase your odds for success with IBM skills training.”
To learn more about the Innovation Center for Education, check out our website.
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