FIT1049 Week 1: The IT Profession

• This is week 1 pre-class material for FIT1049 IT Professional Practice
• Topics include professions, the IT profession, IT roles, and organizations taught by Sadia Nawaz

Unit Organization

• Strand 1 covers the knowledge needed for IT Professional Practice through online videos and workshops each week
• Strand 2 involves practicing professional skills, broadly covered in applied sessions and workshops
• This unit aims to enhance understanding of contextual issues in IT and provide opportunities to practice relevant skills

Table of Contents

• Week 1: The IT Profession
• Week 2: Information Sources and GenAI
• Week 3: Communication
• Week 4: Situations, Decisions, and Risk
• Week 5: Panel of Invited Speakers
• Week 6: Security
• Week 7: Working in Teams
• Week 8: Responsible IT
• Week 9: Inclusion
• Week 10: Human-Centred Software Engineering
• Week 11: Organizations
• Week 12: Panel / Interactive Industry Talk

Unit Learning Outcomes

• Describe the social, ethical, and legal implications of working with IT expertise professionally
• Understand and justify decisions in professional settings using ethics and legal frameworks, like the ACS Code of Ethics
• Effectively plan professional communications using appropriate techniques and technologies
• Contribute professionally to teams using appropriate techniques and technologies
• Conduct critical research for specific purposes in professional settings
• Systematically develop and communicate personal reflections to inform future practice

Assessment

• Four portfolio exercises (P1...P4), also known as "Applied Session Exercises," based on applied session activities and worth 25%, spread throughout weeks 2, 3, 7, and 9
• There are three Assignments
• A1: Individual oral presentation (18%) in Week 6
• A2: Team video (24%) in Week 11
• A3: Team reflection written report (18%) in Week 12
• The weekly MCQ Quiz is worth 10%
• The weekly reflection is worth 5%

Timetable & Resources

• Moodle Page:
  • Asynchronous study videos
  • Weekly pre-class activities
  • Applied session worksheets
  • Portfolio and assignment specifications and submission areas
• EdStem:
  • Weekly content release announcements
  • Q&A for upcoming assessments
• During the Week:
  • Workshops
  • Applied sessions

What is a profession?

• A profession involves training, qualifications, and often a license
• Proof of sufficient training is required
• Standard practice or 'norms' can include some variety from individual to individual
• Standard behavioral expectations are observed
• A professional community/society may:
  • Be compulsory, serving as 'approval to practice'
  • Exclude members for misbehavior
  • Regulate the industry
  • Lobby government

Is IT a Profession?

• Arguments for IT as a profession:
  • Technical training and qualifications are required
  • Bite-sized certifications are often used to demonstrate skill focusing on specific skills
  • ACS (Australian Computer Society), Engineers Australia
• Arguments against IT as a profession:
  • Anyone can practice IT without formal qualifications
  • Regulating the breadth of IT activities is impossible for one organization
  • There is no real desire or need for a central 'community' since creativity, innovation, and individualism are highly valued
• All professions serve others, and IT is no exception, socially responsible conduct is expected

IT Professional Roles

• Include programmers, analysts, network engineers
• IT organizations such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM
• Organizations that rely on IT to provide a service such as: Amazon, Facebook, Uber
• Organizations that have come to rely on IT such as: Deloitte, ANZ
• Organizations that provide IT consultancy services to others such as: Accenture, IBM

Aspects of the IT Field

• Skills are developed through self-teaching, certifications, and university degrees
• The context of is broad, including IT consultancy, health, transport, hardware, financial services, and software development
• Roles include IT Help Desk, start-up innovator, web designer, and CEO of a large corporation
• For those unfamiliar with IT:
  • IT can seem like a “black box” or magic practiced by experts
  • Professional attitude and service are expected
  • Ethical, moral, and socially responsible conduct are required

What is Professional Practice?

• Purposeful behavior by someone in a professional role
• Aims to improve their organization, society, and themselves
• Being in control of your behavior
• Includes communication, research, work, collaboration, investigation, presentation, consultation, and advising
• It is an expectation imposed as a responsible professional
• Society and peers expect specific behavior

IT Professional Skills

• Technical skills examples: Programming, data analysis, data modeling, testing, systems analysis
  • Can be learned
• Professional skills examples: behaving ethically, negotiating, understanding/adapting to different cultural contexts, collaborating with others, being creative.
  • Must be practiced

Professional Skills - The Changing Landscape

• Employers seek graduates with "soft skills" which include:
  • Verbal and written communication
  • Collaboration
  • Critical thinking
  • Problem-solving
  • Attention to detail
  • Writing
• Future education should prepare students to see possibilities for innovation and create their jobs,
• Graduates will need cultural competencies
• Essential future workforce skills include creativity, complex problem-solving, personal interaction skills, and the ability to learn
• In-demand workers will critically assess data, they will communicate this well using multi-disciplinary and unconventional approaches
• Non-routine jobs needing human problem-solving, creativity, adaptability, flexibility, physical dexterity, and communication skills will be future jobs

Characteristics of Successful IT Professionals

• Loves technology
• Understands data
• Understands the business
• Can speak both techie and non-techie
• Is a mile deep in primary expertise
• Working knowledge of related tech areas
• Shares knowledge with others
• Loves to learn
• Is a team player
• Thinks outside the box
• Sees problems as learning
• Loves technical challenges
• Needed broader skills include intuitive pattern recognition, flexibility and tolerance of ambiguity, information sifting and evaluation, and personal resilience and agility

Top 10 Skills of 2025

• Analytical thinking and innovation
• Active learning and learning strategies
• Complex problem-solving
• Critical thinking and analysis
• Creativity, originality and initiative
• Leadership and social influence
• Technology use, monitoring and control
• Technology design and programming
• Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility
• Reasoning, problem-solving and ideation

Additional Skills

• Collaboration and management are essential
• In addition to their developing technical expertise scientists also need to be able to: collaborate with industry, manage intellectual property issues, manage budgets, work teams, and staff

Diversity of Roles with IT Expertise

• Prompt Engineer
• Data librarian
• DevOps engineer
• Educational technologist
• Cloud Architect
• Usability consultant
• UX Designer
• Help desk officer
• Business analyst
• Data analysis
• Data manager
• Visualisation specialist
• eResearch manager
• Database designer
• Hacker
• Game developer
• Project manager
• Programmer
• Software quality assurance
• Al Developer
• Systems analyst
• Interface Developer
• Information manager
• Software architect
• Multimedia developer
• Software engineer
• Data integrity officer
• Data scientist
• Security advisor
• Intelligence analyst
• Network administrator

Jobs That Didn't Exist 10 Years Ago

• Include App developer, Social media manager, Uber driver, Driverless car engineer, Cloud computing specialist, Big data analyst/data scientist, Sustainability manager, YouTube content creators, Drone operators, Millennial generational expert
• Driverless car engineer, Social media influencer, Blockchain analyst, Podcast producer, Telemedicine physician, Cloud architect, Uber driver, Drone operator, Chief listening officer, Budtender, Big data scientist, Contact tracer, E-sports game coaches, Online dating profile writers, TikTok marketer

"Cultural Competence"

• Defined as the beliefs, behaviors, languages, practices, and expressions considered unique to members of a specific ethnicity, race, or national origin
• Cultural differences impact:
  • Communications, whether its bad news, delivered direct vs indirect
  • The benefits of teamwork
  • Organisational versus personal career loyalty
  • Time (e.g. deadlines; overtime)
  • Work/life balance
  • Work/social mixing
  • Formality (e.g. greetings, dress) – and respect
  • Hierarchies – deep vs broad
• These differences should be scheduled around important religious festivals and worship
• Individuals vs stereotypes

The Skills List

• Active learning
• Adaptability
• Agility
• Analytical thinking
• Attention to detail
• Collaborate with industry
• Communication skills
• Complex problem-solving
• Continuing ability to learn
• Creativity
• Critical thinking
• Critically assess content
• Cultural competency
• Flexibility
• Ideation
• Influencing others
• Information evaluation
• Information sifting
• Initiative
• Innovation
• Interpersonal skills
• Intuitive pattern recognition
• Leadership
• Making sense of data
• Manage budgets
• Manage contracts
• Manage intellectual property
• Manage staff
• Manage teams
• Multi-disciplinary approaches
• Originality
• Personal interaction skills
• Personal resilience
• Intuitive pattern recognition
• Physical dexterity
• Reasoning
• Social influence
• Stress tolerance
• Technology design
• Technology use control
• Technology use monitoring
• Tolerance of ambiguity
• Unconventional approaches
• Verbal communication skills
• Working collaboratively
• Written communication skills

Your Personal Strengths

• Write down in 3-5 sentences your professional aspirations using your IT skills
  • What IT role do you want?
  • Why?
• Write down in 3-5 sentences of personal and professional strengths
  • What current skills can you offer to the role?
  • Why are they relevant?
• Write down in 3-5 sentences areas for your future professional development
  • What do you still need to learn?
  • how can you get the expertise and/or experience you need?
• The information gathered will be useful to the week 2 applied session
• There are several layers of relevance to your role
• Societal and communal contributions
• Organisational and industry contributions
• Technical contributions

Role Relevance

• Your roles consist of several layers of relevance to you, including: societal, industry, technical
• Examples:
  • "Contribute to the society/community where software are designed in an accessible and human-centric manner for everyone to use"
  • "Contribute as a domain specialist expertise so that the company's products are high-quality and compliant"
  • "Work collaboratively with other specialists to develop products that are user-friendly and accessible"
• As per example, "a UX designer in a software development company"

Learning Review

• The general summary includes:
  • The nature of a profession
  • The nature of the IT profession
  • The range of jobs, tasks, roles, organisations
  • The importance of non-technical skills
  • Your professional aspirations
  • Administrative information about this unit

Action Items

• Complete any assigned readings
• Watch any assigned videos
• Complete any assigned preparation tasks