Pakistani IT education project wins recognition

A Pakistani education project that aims for introduction of a new method of teaching software engineering to undergraduate students based on open software has been recognised and acknowledged by the Global University Network for Innovation (GUNI).

The `Integration of Open Source Software Projects in IT Education' is an innovative software engineering project that is gradually achieving its objectives by training and allowing students to learn good programming practices and by getting feedback from professionals through open source. It is also sequentially helping the software industry by providing them with a workforce that has worked on industrial strength projects.

The project has also found a mention in the newsletter of GUNI, which states: ``If successful, this model has the potential to revolutionise software engineering education by addressing the fundamental issue of exposing students to real-life projects and help the software industry without adding any extra overhead on the faculty.''

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Zeropoint.IT is very happy to learn that Open Source software will play a more prominent role in the education of software engineers in Pakistan. We fully back GUNI's remark that this can expose students to real-life projects without adding any overhead on the faculty.

Moreover, isn't it always bad to tie education too harshly to any specific industry vendor? Doesn't schooling always have to be independent? For too long have we seen the industry (and only a few players!) dictating which specific tools are to be used and taught in software engineering classes. By finally getting rid of vendor lock-in at the universities, truly independent and open minded software engineers can start to emerge from them.

Zeropoint.IT for one can't wait to welcome this next generation software geniuses into it's ranks in Islamabad!