Postgrad qualification highlights ‘professional practice’

New postgraduate certificate aims to sharpen professional standards

A new postgraduate certificate in ICT and related business skills has been instituted, as a result of discussions between industry representatives and the Tertiary Education Commission.

The Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Development (Electronics and ICT) is aimed at graduates with at least two years’ experience in ICT who want to enhance their knowledge, skills and productivity.

The certificate syllabus pays particular attention to standards of professional practice rather than focusing only on knowledge and skill transfer. In this way particularly, it will be useful to the NZ Computer Society, which is keen to institute a professional qualification as an adjunct to membership.

Work for the certificate seeks to improve standards in the industry; one of its briefs is to “encourage critiquing of current professional practice through reflection on workplace practice.”

The certificate may be taken extramurally and with the assistance of distance-learning, block courses interleaved with paid work and the use of network technologies such as video conferencing.

Students will be able to integrate both technical and management topics in their work-based projects which they will work on either on their own or in groups, says TEC.

The qualification fits into the national Growth and Innovation Framework and its development and delivery has therefore been partly government funded.

It will be offered initially by Massey University and the University of Canterbury in the first semester this year, and other tertiary education establishments may join them later in the year.

The consortium that developed the certificate included the Institution of Professional Engineers (IPENZ), the New Zealand Council of Engineering Deans (NZCED), Information Technology Association of New Zealand, New Zealand Software Association, New Zealand Computer Society, Telecom, EDS, Endeavour Capital, the HiGrowth Project, and Electrotechnology Industry Training Organisation (ETITO).

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