Work in progress - information technology project management: An industry partnership

The instructor-learner paradigm has been the principal model of teaching for many years. However, over the past year, the author has been using industry partners within academia to hire students as employees generating a new learning paradigm where students actively engage with industry as Web developers and managers, while attending classes full-time. A faculty-led team at Purdue University comprised of a graduate student as the project manager was partnered with Parish manufacturing in Indianapolis to develop their Internet Web presence. The project included advanced programming and information technology applications. This paper details the work in progress of a faculty-led project in which a graduate student serves as the communications coordinator and project manager over developers in a living laboratory environment. This enabled professors to act as both an employer and an instructor to the student, providing real- world symbolism of learning on-the-job. The additional benefits to the students of this relationship included improvement of communication skills, time management skills, and handling of stress under pressure of a deadline, as well as experience gained in development and maintenance of a live Website. The opportunity provided an alternate method of teaching that demonstrates a new instructor-learner paradigm.