Online engineering degree program

The University of Western Ontario and Cisco Systems have announced a deal where Western will incorporate Cisco designed curriculum into two courses.

In January, Western began teaching curriculum from Cisco's Networking Academy Program through its continuing studies program. According to Michael Bennett, UWO professor of software engineering in the electrical and computer engineering department, the courses will count towards a degree in engineering science as well as the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) designation.

The two courses will replace the ones it had been offering, Bennett says, although the students will have to take an exam from a registered Prometric centre to earn the designation.

Students will have to pay to take the exam, but "I suspect most of the students will (do it) simply because of the cache of having that (certification) in the market place and that they will be able to be both b. eng.s and CCNAs," says Bennett.

The program was launched in 1997 and is available in more than 130 countries. The Internet-based curriculum made its Canadian debut four years ago, but this is the first time it has been intertwined with a degree-granting program, says Anne Miller, education marketing manager Cisco System in Canada.

While the course was designed by Cisco, Bennett says they've made some adjustments.

"We are using the core curriculum, but we are extending that a little bit primarily by putting in references to other vendors beyond just Cisco. In other words, we can't been seen only looking at a Cisco approach and not a Nortel or somebody else," he says.

Bennett is familiar with both parts of the curriculum. He and two of his colleagues went through the CCNA training (a must for anyone who teaches the material) and introduced the first two data networking and communications courses at Western and has been teaching them for 23 years. Although he only began teaching the material to a class of 10 in late January, he has nothing but praise for the material.

"The curriculum itself is well thought out and one of the things we did was we looked at it and said, 'Is this satisfactory for our students?' The curriculum is online out of San Jose (Calif.) which means students can look at the curriculum any time they want," Bennett says.

"They can come to classrooms and hear me talk if they want to, but what they're likely to do is come if they have problems or things which they can't understand. It makes it much more efficient in terms of the educational process."

The course design also wins high makes from a teaching perspective. Bennett says a series of multiple choice exams enables the students and teachers to know how they are doing

"They've automated a lot of the drudgery of looking after marks. In fact, the system is so beautiful I wish I had it at the university for all my courses," he says.

"One of the problems in networking is that it moves so quickly," Bennett adds. "They're moving forward at breakneck speed too, and we need to know that so that we can graduate as well trained people as we possibly can and share in the research that they're doing."

While up-to-date curriculum alone makes the program worthwhile, Bennett says the chance to move the relationship from the Internet into the lab is equally exciting.

"We're hoping that we can find joint research projects that we can work on with Cisco, so that sort of keeps us in the forefront of networking development. That's just a plus for an engineering school," he says.

Given the decline in university funding, Bennett says this could become an important example for Canadian schools and encourages other private sector companies to follow suit.

"I see this as a very valuable model in the IT industry in general," Bennett says. "When we partner with somebody like Cisco it works out to everybody's advantage."