Developing a Mission Critical Operations Curriculum Using Emerging Technologies

As part of the Trade Adjusted Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program developed by the Department of Labor, a "Mission Critical Operations" project has been funded to be administered by a consortium led by Cleveland Community College (NC). The other consortium members are Nash Community College (NC), University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Southern Regional Community College (GA), and Wake Technical Community College (NC). As part of this consortium, Wake Technical Community College has received funding to develop a mission critical operation curriculum program. This program is to meet industry demand for skilled workers who can address mission critical breaches as they occur. Also, these workers should be able to prevent and mitigate damage from mission critical breaches that may or could occur.
Students, in this grant funded program, will develop skills in infrastructure development and maintenance, information security, mission critical communications, and emergency operations. It is the aim of the mission critical operations program to develop students into skilled employees for industry constituents and to promote economic growth and development for the contiguous community. The mission critical operations program also aims to best prepare students for a fulfilling, challenging, and well-compensated career.
This program has been designed to make use of new and emerging technologies in education to best prepare students for the workforce. These technologies include: Netlabs, open educational resources, and a simulation with a game style representation of processes students would follow as mission critical operations technicians. Netlabs will enable distance learning for students in a digital lab environment. This will allow for a close approximation of the hands on examples that students would normally need to come to campus to experience. Furthermore, this will give students a more realistic feel for mission critical operations, as it is a field which deals heavily with remote operations and automation. Open educational resources will allow for a greater population to enhance their understanding of mission critical operations and allow for some level of professional development for employees within the industry. Finally, the simulation will provide students with real world examples of the daily operations of a mission critical facility. This will allow students to engage and broaden their understanding of the field.
This presentation will include information on the mission critical operations curriculum and how it was developed, including information on industry partnerships and how it has influenced course and curriculum design. We will also discuss the new technologies that we are using, why they have been selected, and how we expect them to impact program growth and attainment levels of students. We will also include a demonstration of the simulation. This will include an interactive component to allow those present to delve into the simulation and understand the steps in the process of completing the simulation thoroughly and correctly. We will close out this session with time for questions and comments from the audience.