IBM, university develop courses in Web 2.0

19.10.2006
IBM and the University of Arizona announced Thursday new curriculum to help prepare students for corporate IT work using Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, forums, and wikis. The course, one of the first to focus on skills related to Web 2.0 technologies, will teach Management Information Systems (MIS) and marketing students how to plan, launch and populate online communities through the use of these technologies to help businesses attract clients, generate revenue and support customers.

Rawn Shah, community program manager with IBM's developerWorks, spoke with Computerworld about the impact of these Web 2.0 tools on corporate IT and their developers. Excerpts from that conversation follow:

What is the goal of the new program IBM developed with the University of Arizona?

Enrollment is dropping in MIS and related fields [at the university] and has been dropping since the dotcom bomb. The university is trying to find new ways of introducing MIS and IT. We look at what the students are doing. Most of these guys have had some kind exposure [to Web 2.0] if they are not bloggers themselves. We're trying to give them a deeper purpose, to explain to them that there is a job waiting for them.

What will be the main uses of blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 tools in corporations?

There is the internal enterprise environment, communities that you have for your employees so they can communicate and better work together across teams. Then there are external scenarios, where you are working with your customers. It could be supporting products or co-developing the next generation product with your customers. You can provide your business partners information or work with them on co-marketing. You're going to be doing different scenarios or use cases for each of these. If a company is having a conference, you can build awareness of a conference and get feedback from attendees.