OPS

OPS STREAM

OPS Stream Discussion

Overview

This WIKI is a collection of curriculum discussions held in May 1024 and January 6, 2015, as well as discussion from PAC committee meetings have been held several times during 2014. The term PAC stands for Program Advisory Committee. This committee consists of management, faculty, industry professionals, and former CNS/CTY students that meet to review and discuss the current curriculum and recommend or advise any changes that may need to be made. It is the intension of this WIKI to provide a collection point for ideas and collaboration between courses for the OPS Stream to assist in future curriculum development as a result of these PAC meetings.

Challenge:

Curriculum development can seem like a daunting task! On one hand, it is important for curriculum to grow and develop in order to take advantage of changing trends and help to better train our students for industry. On the other hand, great care must be taken to not make changes in course curriculum without considering the impact on other courses, and to make certain that content and learning skills are maintained in the learning outcomes for courses until a major curriculum review and possible curriculum revisions are warranted. Other challenges include limited time frames for all faculty to meet at the same time to discuss curriculum issues.

This WIKI's Approach:

This WIKI hopes to encourage on-line repository of OPS stream course discussions to provide to help view all courses and to foster communication between faculty members. Faculty members can simply view and contribute freely to the the curriculum discussion. To help keep the discussion on track, a Triage framework has will be used to prioritize suggested improvements into short-term, long-term, and wish-list categories. In this way, faculty can sort out easy to perform changes or "tweaks" to courses and foster discussion among courses in the OPS stream. It is hoped that this method allows for transparency, and allows for an encouraging and welcoming area for faculty to make suggestions / improvements to course curriculum.

Faculty members (new hires and existing) can be directed to this site when teaching these courses for the first time to help gain the fundamental importance of the course curriculum, to note the importance of flow between the streaming courses, and to perhaps integrate this knowledge into their course delivery to provide students with forward linkages (i.e. a "heads-up") of why the current course content topics are essential to their success in the CNS/CTY programs.

General Definitions (Purpose) of OPS Streams

There are two basic diploma programs at Seneca College that utilize the OPS stream:

CNS (Computer Networking and Technical Support)

This program places emphasis on practical subjects and "hands-on" training delivered in specialty labs. These dedicated labs are configured for various environments such as Linux, Microsoft Windows, networking, OC hardware, Internet, AS/400, and RS/6000. Through these labs, students have access to stand-alone, clustered and networked PC's along with a host of LAN servers and mid-range computers.

CTY (Computer System Technology Overview)

Similar in certain respects to CNS program, but contains 2 additional semesters to allow students to specialize in areas such as: Security, Data Communications, and Network Administration.

Recommendations From Recent PAC Meetings

The following rough program maps were discussed in the January Startup Meeting (Jan 6, 2015)

Curriculum Discussion for each course in OPS Stream

• ULI101 - Curriculum Discussion
• OPS235 - Curriculum Discussion
• OPS335 - Curriculum Discussion
• OPS435 - Curriculum Discussion
• OPS535 - Curriculum Discussion

Additional Resources

• Meeting Minutes for CNS/CTY PAC Committee Meetings