IT University West

From Researching Virtual Initiatives in Education

It-vest, networking universities, is an educational and scientific network between three university institutions in the western part of Denmark:

University of Southern Denmark

Aalborg University and

Aarhus University.

Background

It-vest was formed in response to public and private enterprises in Denmark claiming and forecasting a severe lack of qualified IT employees with university degrees. Fewer high school students were considering enrolling in IT programs as they considered IT a tool, not a profession. At the same time other graduates - especially from the Humanities - found it difficult to find jobs in private companies.

In 1999, the Danish government established and financed the network to strengthen the IT courses and research developed by the participating universities. The primary goal of it-vest is to develop and market educational programs. It-vest has a board consisting of deans from the participating universities and representatives from the ICT industry.

Activities

It-vest particularly focuses on the development and marketing of IT educations as well as other IT activities at the three universities. Furthermore, it-vest supports nationwide activities, promoting IT educations and the development of IT in general.

The activities of it-vest are among others:

Initiating the development and support of new IT education programs.

Branding tertiary IT educations in the western part of Denmark.

Increasing the number of IT graduates in Denmark.

Reinforcing the cooperation between existing educational and scientific settings.

Establishing cooperation between the universities and the corporate world regarding courses and research within IT.

Initiating the application of IT in teaching.

For further information, please visit the web site: http://www.it-vest.dk

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