Profile of a graduate

Given the fact that the shape of the future graduate, his knowledge and skills to a large extent should be determined by the market situation and its needs, allow us to present what we think this market looks like and in which direction it is evolving. The experience so far allows us to present our observations in a few points:

Information technology is evolving into web-based solutions (browser-based access to data and applications via the Internet), which are being used more and more, including offline. Traditional systems, on the other hand, obtain “Internet functions.”

• Information distribution and exchange is increasingly taking place via the Internet and web-based solutions, which are becoming a universal and widely accepted information and transaction platform. This platform is also gradually taking over the functions of newspapers, radio, telephones, television or information brochures. In practice, this means moving a lot of legacy and putting a lot of new IT systems on the Internet plane,
• The ease of access to the Internet is spreading the public’s contact with information applications/systems provided by the Internet.

This results in:

• The previous model of using applications/systems has changed, in which system use was traditionally preceded by user training,
• The model of the typical IT system user has changed,
• The requirements for today’s users in terms of IT knowledge are lower than they used to be.

A consequence of putting IT systems on the Internet is also a change in their sales model, which contributes to the ease with which customers can migrate from one IT solution provider to another. The application itself, so to speak, must with its attractiveness fight for the favor of users, and an important element of this attractiveness, in addition to the functions it performs, is its appearance and intuitiveness of use.

In addition, general technological developments, increases in memory capacity and processor power have contributed to the spread of multimedia solutions in many aspects of information technology use.

Application implications.

The combination of these trends along with increasing Internet bandwidths implies the following condition:

• The application is a web-based application, with an intuitive and graphically refined interface, using multimedia elements in its operation,
• The application is used in a massive way.

The consequence of these changes are particularly high requirements for the created solutions/systems, in terms of the interface itself, including its graphic design. We want to emphasize the growing role of aesthetics and graphic form of the interface, which, in the case of the existence of multiple systems with similar functionality, can determine the customer’s choice.

Consequences for the labor market

In our opinion, the job market suffers from a shortage of IT specialists with an interdisciplinary background that combines a solid theoretical foundation, programming knowledge, and knowledge of Internet technologies and computer graphics. Knowledge that would enable the implementation of new Internet and telecommunications solutions that meet the requirements described above. These facts mean that there has been a demand for a new model of education, better adapted to the new requirements. WSTI implements this model of education by complementing and expanding classical computer science education. Therefore, in the following section, we try to present a model of education that would as fully as possible allow to educate computer scientists capable of taking on the new tasks posed by the labor market.

The goal of education is to prepare such a cadre that will be prepared to enter engineering and work in the computer science profession and to solve complex, interdisciplinary problems in the field of computer science in the broadest sense.

Graduates during their studies will gain the knowledge needed to:

• creative activity in the analysis of design methods,
• Implementation and verification of components of information systems,
• Design and administration of medium-sized information systems,
• Practical use of IT tools,
• Design, construction and operation of computer networks and software,
• Computer graphics design.

In addition, the graduate will be prepared to meet the expectations of the changing market.

The above assumptions mean that an IT specialist who meets the needs of the modern market will have, in addition to the universal qualities of any IT specialist, such as:

• solid knowledge of the basics of universal Information Technology, providing the opportunity to independently deepen it in the field of new solutions that will appear in the future;
• solid theoretical foundations of a universal nature in fields related to Information Technology;

also additional features such as:

• extensive knowledge of Internet technologies (network issues, servers and their services, programming in the Internet environment);
• knowledge of computer graphics at a level enabling the implementation of the presentation layer of implemented solutions in the Internet environment;
• knowledge enabling the construction of systems that process and present information of various formats and types, such as text, image, sound and video on the Internet platform.

In addition, the features that a WSTI graduate will have are:

• ability to self-educate based on knowledge acquired from theoretical and practical subjects;
• ability to solve problems independently.

The teaching concept is to educate IT specialists who will be prepared to work in the following positions:

• LAN/WAN designer
• LAN/WAN administrator
• programmer
• programmer designer
• designer and developer of databases
• system analyst
• web and web ads designer