Future Technician Preparation (Information Technology)

Our series on Future of Work issues as related to technician education keeps on trucking.  This FLATE Focus series has touched on the Future of Work related to the NSF-ATE program's focus on advanced manufacturing technologies, agricultural and bio-technologies, energy, and environmental Technologies in previous issues. This month our "Work to do for Future Technician Preparation theme" shifts to information technology.  The continuing question is how new technologies influence the technical workforce and what do future technician have to do to secure knowledge of and comfort level with specific subsets of existing STEM connected skills. We will address micro- and nanotechnologies, security technologies, and geospatial technologies as the year progresses.

 Our motivation for this series is twofold.  First new technology in the workplace does generate different expectations for the technician workforce.  Our intent is to highlight the knowledge and skills reality of that advancing technology.  Second, we want to engage as many people interested in the development of the nation's technician workforce into the conversation as to how NSF can facilitate lowering the impact of that skills gap.

Technician career paths within the information technology sphere of influence is changing.  Perhaps the first question about this change is the vocabulary itself.  For example, if you have some history in the field, "programming" is a comfortable word that has, without constraint to a language, a specific subset of computer science knowledge and skill expectations of technicians with respect to programming skills.  Today, "programming" is not a descriptor used much but "coding" is. So, an initial and perhaps the basic question is whether "coding" expands the expectations of "programming" and if it does why and how does it do so?  (This is a blog so please feel free to jump in with your insight.  Especially if the ability to "code" does need important new skills to accomplish its mission).

Data science programs represent new vocabulary and a new interest in response to the huge increase in access to "Big Data".  A Future of Work issue that is easily recognized but its challenges are not quite so clear.  The question of interest: At what level does it impact the I.T. tech?  This is followed by a penetrating examination of current I.T. program practices as to if that impact can be met within in current instructional efforts.  This is, of course, a very important question once skill and knowledge expectations related to data manipulation, etc for technicians are determined. 

Finally, this brief insertion into I.T. technician education was restricted to a technician that does write, edit, and execute a program that services some predestined task.  A narrow view, sure, but what are or should be the expansions of that perspective.  Or, will I.T. technicians be expected to venture out of the software world into the firmware and hardware domains.   Will new technologies drive them into another arena as well?  (Trouble-shooting a disturbance that disrupts a process control scheme, for example, or perhaps assigning or confirming the address assignment of a sensor that reports to a controlling distributed computer control network connected to the Cloud?)

"The work to do starts with you," is and will continue to be our exit avenue for each of these Focus Future of Workforce explorations. However, this time the message from industry is very important. What are the expectations for your future I.T. technicians? What will they spend the time (your resources) doing? Will these new techs need refined skills from their course of study or would you prefer to put the specific to your mission skills into their toolbox directly yourself? If you don't tell us, we can't help. NSA-ATE is listening and can put its resources to act in response to what it hears so now is the time to speak up. Think about skills needs. Contact us.