SLASSCOM Visual Design and Multimedia Curriculum

Diploma level curriculum as a guidance to educational institutes.

This project is maintained by SLASSCOM

Introduction

This model curriculum is to be used as guidance by educational institutes in teaching ICT.

Which career qualification?
This is for students passionate about a Graphic Design related career. Depth of the lessons are intended for diploma level qualifications in pursuing an entry-level job.
Recommended duration?
Through a short (one year or less) intensive course.
Is this free to use?
This is an open-source curriculum under Creative Commons license - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. You are free to use this for commercial, non-commercial use under the terms of the license.
Who are behind this?
SLASSCOM (together with the industry professionals) expects to maintain this and keep relevant to reflect the industry's entry-level skill demands.

Modules of the curriculum

Module Details
Foundational Principles of Visual Design View Topics
Graphic Design View Topics
Basic Video/Audio Editing View Topics
Basic 3D Design View Topics
User Experience Design View Topics

Problem overview

Skills development and capacity building are vital in achieving the SLASSCOM Vision 2022 of USD 5 billion in revenue, 200,000 jobs, and 1000 startups.

The National IT-BPM workforce survey 2019, conducted by the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA), reveals that the IT-BPM workforce’s annual shortage is 12,140. The local universities produce only 9,076 graduates a year, and the annual demand stands at 21,216. This supply-demand gap is shown to keep growing with the industry’s expansion and has become a significant bottleneck impacting the sector’s growth.

Although there are tens of thousands of students learning ICT related subjects at various courses, their employability in the software export industry is notably low. Unemployability is mainly due to the non-relevant curriculums and low quality teaching methods.

How this curriculum helps you

As per the industry observations, most of the ICT related curriculums in use are outdated and do not reflect the skills required by the industry. SLASSCOM expects to keep this curriculum up-to-date through volunteers and keep freely available for any institute to use as guidance for their curriculums.

Please note that this curriculum is not a comprehensive lesson plan to cover all the skills required. Instead, it is a limited scoped, minimal content for a student to find an entry-level job opportunity. The content of the modules, topics, and lessons are developed independently by different contributors from the industry.

Underline principles

This curriculum is built based on the following ground principles in mind. To contribute, it is essential to understand and adhere to these principles.

Applicability before theory
A common mistake of most curriculums is that they teach a lot of theory to students before understanding how and when to apply the same. This curriculum is built in a way students experience and understand the usage first so that they appreciate the theory when learned later. For example, students should use 'sorting' practically before writing a 'bubble sort' algorithm.
Hands-on teaching
Rather than long presentation slides and descriptions, the lecturer should show/write 'real code', 'real work' and explain the concepts to students in teaching.
Continuous evaluations
Student evaluation should be continuous and shouldn't happen just at a final examination. Use interactive, gamified tools to do quick and frequent assessments.
Focus on essentials
If the curriculum is shallow and broad, students may learn many things but won't master any. Since this curriculum is for a short period and is for entry levels, we propose focusing on a few things and teach them well.
Pair lecturing
Pair a professional from the industry with the academic lecturer when delivering the lessons. The lesson should take a discussion format between the lecturer and professional, allowing students to participate by asking questions. Industry professionals can show practical examples and some hands-on demonstrations.

How to contribute

This repository is maintained as a community effort in the industry. If you like to contribute, please go through the following link:

Guide for contributors