News and Features
Three Industry Leaders Collaborate To Improve ECE Education
[June 21, 2007] - Three industry leaders have teamed up to help engineering schools provide world-class training.
Smart Communications, Inc. (SMART)--the country's number one wireless services provider--has teamed up with Cisco, the worldwide leader in networking and Trends.Net, Inc., a leading learning partner in IT, in developing a customized course entitled Internetworking Fundamentals that will benefit engineering teachers from Metro Manila and North Luzon.
By familiarizing teachers with devices, techniques and methods used in an actual work setting, the course is designed to help them go beyond the textbook and into what happens in the real world. Smart, Cisco and Trends.Net are working together to equip teachers with knowledge that can help make their students competitive anywhere in the world.
This effort was initiated by Smart and launched under the Smart Wireless Engineering Education Program (SWEEP). A first-of-its-kind industry-academe partnership, SWEEP seeks to improve the level of technology and engineering education in the country
Aside from establishing a wireless laboratory in 40 partner schools all over the country, SWEEP also has a continuing education program that benefits teachers and students from partner schools.
“Our engineers conduct trainings for the engineering faculty of our SWEEP partner schools and universities, These are done to help teachers get a more realistic understanding of the telecoms industry and be equipped with the knowledge and skills which they may pass to their students, says Mar Tamayo, head of the Planning and Engineering department of Smart.
“We are happy that aside from our own team, some of our industry partners have joined us in our goal of engineering faculty development,” he adds.
According to Eric Sulit, channels and marketing manager of Cisco Philippines, SWEEP is in line with Cisco’s corporate social responsibility initiatives, including the Cisco Networking Academy Program, which is being run in 140 schools in the Philippines.
"Our objectives are similar in many aspects. What we hope to achieve is to drive more people to connect to the Internet, starting with the schools. SWEEP aims to educate the engineering faculty as they form the future of the mobile and telco industries. An increasingly important component in the mobile and telco world is Internet Protocol or IP networking and this is where Cisco comes in," says Sulit.
Meanwhile, trainers come from Trends.Net, Inc., which provides education services for IT and management professionals. Trends.Net is an affiliate of Trends & Technologies, Inc., a leading solutions provider for information and communications technology in the country. Trends.Net is authorized to deliver Cisco Training Courses, as a sponsored Organization of Element K, a Cisco Learning Solutions Partner. As such, Trends.Net trains individuals in preparation for Cisco certifications.
According to Philip San Luis, managing director of Trends.Net, Inc., the training should give the teacher-participants the necessary understanding to maximize the benefits of the Internet, especially since most everything is now done through the Internet. To ensure the effective transfer of knowledge, an approach was used that would work best on a “class” of professors – simple and interactive.
"After the four-day training, participants would have completed already the first half of the training course for the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification, which is divided into two parts," says Paul Ryan Flores, Trends.Net training consultant. "The teachers would actually experience how to use the technology and they can share with their students the knowledge and experience of configuring network devices."
Topics include Data Communications on the Engineering level, Data Networks, Switching Methods, Routing Protocols and Wide Area Technologies. Flores says these are "based on real world application, so when students graduate, they are already familiar and knowledgeable about what’s being used in the real world."
Kristofferson Factora De Ocampo, who teaches programming courses to ECE students at the Ateneo de Manila University, is among the 16 trainees. "I graduated with a degree in Computer Science. Being a software person, not a Communications Engineer, I practically know nothing about how data is actually sent and received," says De Ocampo. "The sessions gave me the necessary knowledge to improve the delivery of Data Communications in the Ateneo."
"After this, we will try to modify our syllabus, especially subjects on Data Communications," shares James C. Mañego, an instructor at Systems Plus College Foundation in Pampanga. He says they will try to integrate most of the topics discussed during the course.
Meanwhile, Annalyn D. Soria, an ECE instructor from the University of Baguio, says the training will “somehow fill the gap between the academe and the industry” and enable teachers to help students “adapt to the environment of the industry.”
As Darwin Flores, Smart’s Public Affairs Group senior manager for community partnerships, points out, the business trend now is towards globalization. Thus, the role of each school is to build the manpower by producing quality graduates of world-class caliber.
Smart is helping the schools achieve this. “We intend to conduct more seminars and symposia in line with SWEEP’s continuing education/teacher training component,” Flores says.
