WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED:
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Recognize the IT business
community for participation in
the CSS partnership; in
helping support educational
reform; and in enlisting other
business partners

Encourage faculty who
recognize needed changes in
teaching and learning
practices to address IT industry expectations

Provide innovative professional
development opportunities
for faculty seeking to enhance
their effectiveness in
preparing IT professionals

Formally recognize faculty
achievements in CSS projects

Support structural development

SUPPORTING FACULTY

Introducing the CSS problem-based learning experience into the traditional learning environment also introduces a necessity for faculty involvement that represents a departure from normal course circumstances. Faculty must employ skills, such as the following, to effectively navigate the CSS partnership from the project's inception to its conclusion:

• Negotiation abilities and adaptive project management to ensure appropriate evidence of learning

• Creative generation and effective utilization of new assessment tools for student learning evaluation

• Development of diverse student teams; pro-active and responsive team guidance

• Communication planning

• Scaffolding innovation

In the CSS environment, the role of the educational institution is also expanded. Administrators need to fully understand the differences between CSS and other PBL initiatives in order to enlist business partner participation and to provide appropriate guidance for CSS support system enhancements. Faculty needs elemental access to related skills training required for successful management of CSS problem-based learning projects through the professional development program, and recognition of efforts in the shift toward contextual, project-based approaches to learning through the institutions' reward program. These efforts will encourage faculty to recognize and be assured that the CSS program will provide a rich contextual process for learning, and that the usability of this learning will benefit all partnership participants and the community at large.

 
The CSS project introduces an important, but disconcerting, shift in the methods of the current teaching paradigm. Faculty are required to invest additional planning efforts for hours, days, weeks to adequately address the CSS problem with the business partner, all before the course begins. Students require a myriad of different skills to guide them through this new and challenging process.

Edited from collective comments taken from the CSS Workshop, November 2003