I need a university IT curriculum to follow.

Question

I studied hard in the high school to get a high score and qualify to the local university in which I currently study IT, but after getting to the university I found it too crappy to teach anyone anything, and that is not only my opinion but also the opinion of my fellow colleagues.

Now what do you advise me to do to get that (programming related) knowledge which I can't find at my university?

One possible solution is to download OCW courses and study those courses on my own, but in that case, I need a curriculum to follow.

Thanks in advance for all your help.

EDIT: Thanks all for the courses, but since that is your solution, I need a curriculum to follow, because, for instance, I can find 77 Undergraduate Courses at MIT OCW alone, not to mention other universities, so what courses should I study, and in what order?

Answer 1

Open Course Ware

Answer 2

http://www.marshall.edu/isat/cit.asp

This is an example of the Computer Information Technology degree (various areas of emphasis) that is offered at Marshall University (my alma mater). It is a four year degree program and if you browse through there you can see various 4 year tracks for software, web, database, etc.

Answer 3

http://www.it.rit.edu/

RIT was the first college in the US to offer a degree in Information Technology. I attended from 2001-2005 and it was a really good program. I had compared it to a few other IT degrees at other colleges and RIT's offered a good blend of traditional programming, database, networking, human-computer interaction and other 'IT' topics.

Answer 4

Pick a language (an OO language) and learn all the basic programming concepts with that language:

• flow control
• 3 pillars of OO programming
• Files and streams
• GUI/Graphics programming
• multi-threading
• network programming

On top of that, start going through some essentails:

• html
• mysql
• linux command line

Along the way dont forget the theory:

• Automata Theory
• Design patterns
• Math (linear algerbra, calculus)

As you go through these topics, I am sure new ones will spark your interest, so read about them.

Answer 5

I like the comp sci videos that Stanford University has put up. It's only a few classes and not a whole curriculum, but it's a start.

Answer 6

After graduating from a java school a year ago, I would just read K&R and google youtube videos for "Richard Buckland"

Answer 7

I used to teach programming at a university. The best "curriculum" that exists is to be forced to solve problems with specific requirements. Look for places you can contribute to open source projects. Look for specific features that need to be added. Once you have identified something of interest, research through Google, Stack Overflow, etc. Once done with that, repeat on more advanced projects.

I can guarantee you that 100 hours spent that way is more useful than 500 hours spent reading textbooks or listening to lectures. People don't learn that way. They learn by doing.

Answer 8

Stop Gaming

Pick up a programming language or 2 and use it every day.

Then try to find companies where you can apply the use of that language.

The only benefit of University in my eyes is they cover the conceptual parts of the more scientific part of the IT spectrum, they're useful, but they don't focus enough on the "good programming" aspects.

Personally, If I was an employer, and you came to me with a Uni degree, my first questions would be "is that all?" and "but can you program?".

And I have the misfortune of not yet meeting anybody who can program and they learnt to be good at it soley from University.

Answer 9

Remember also that a lot of what you get from a University education does not come from classes, it comes from the University community. There are always departments on campus hiring students to fix their web sites, professors with broken physics simulations, or teams of Mechanical Engineers who need a programmer to write the control software for their project.

Also, don't forget the non-programming-related courses. An IT curriculum will include several business classes (management, economics, accounting, etc.) in addition to the typical general education requirements (literature, writing/communication, history, math, physics, etc.)

Answer 10

I checked the list of Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs, and the top one was MIT, so I went to their website and I found a Curriculum Guide, and that is exactly what I was looking for.

Now I can also download their courses through OCW.