PIIT Type of Degree - Assignment Example

Reflection Name Institution Date PART A – Interpersonal Issues A. What was your goal/motivation in deciding to embark on the type of degree you are studying? When you enrolled into PIIT, how did you envisage PIIT fitting into your overall goal/motivation? Has the unit made you re-evaluate the type of degree or major/specialisation you have chosen and the career path you had planned? How have your aspirations and plans changed because of what you have learnt in the unit? When deciding to embark on the type of degree that I am studying, my motivation was to gain knowledge and skills proficiency in my line of work. Enrolling into PIIT was a good decision that suited my goal in undertaking my degree. I predicted that PIIT fitted well with my motivation in the sense that I work in a dynamic environment with technology being our main tool of working. As an IT professional, when enrolling, I pictured that professional issues in IT is a subject that would help me gain knowledge in identifying as well as understanding issues that are related to ICT application to personal and organizational context. The unit has made me re-evaluate the type of degree I have chosen and the career path I had planned. Specializing in information technology has always been my dream since I was in high school. Joining the university to specialize in IT worked towards realizing my dream. The professional issues in IT unit has made me realize that I made a good choice of degree. A degree in information technology was my choice when I was joining the university. Therefore, learning professional issues in IT is essential as part of gaining skills in my career path. As an IT professional, my career path required professional skills since I deal with many people and this unit has made me re-evaluate my capacity to engage with others in the IT industry as a professional. With the emphasis on ethics and privacy, PIIT is a unit that I could not do without to develop my professional responsibility. It is a unit that is essential for my career to help me deal with different issues that I experience and face in my career as an ICT professional. My aspirations and plans have changed because of what I have learnt in the unit in various ways. PIIT is a unit that teaches me how to keep my energy at work even if I am channeled with many challenges. I aspired to be a competent person in everything I do as a professional. However, I find myself losing sight of where my career is heading when faced with these challenges. This unit has improved my aspirations by realizing that, having a mentor is an essential part of my career development. Naqvi & Bashir (2011, p.60) says that high technology employees can develop through mentorship if they want to be given more responsibility for their professional development. The PIIT unit has helped learn that it is not easy to always achieve everything perfectly alone. One will always require someone to guide them and assist them with ideas on how to deal with issues or challenging situations at work or in their profession. In addition, I will also incorporate working with others as a team. By being an effective team member, I will be able to learn from others while building on my strengths. I will also support other people efforts while contributing to my best efforts. As an ICT professional, this is a unit that has changed my plans on how to handle issues and work together with teams as a way growing in my career. I have learned that I need to stay focused with attention to my career as a long term project of my life. My aspirations and plans have changed and I will not only be working as an ICT professional but also to proactively manage my career. In managing my career, I have planned to stay relevant, develop professionally, review my IT direction regularly and develop my reputation as an IT professional. I plan to take advantage of opportunities that interest me and take my career to a direction that gives options that are suitable in the long term. Considering what I have learned from this unit, I can say that after completion, I will be a different person aspiring and planning to take my career to a higher level of proficiency. B. What kinds of behaviours might be important for an ICT professional working in a group or team with members from a wide variety of different backgrounds (e.g. diversity of skills, gender, age, religion and ethnicity)? In what ways did you contribute to a sound team performance? What could you have done better to make sure your team worked better? How could you have helped others in your team to perform better? There are specific types of behaviors that an ICT professional working in a group or team with members from a wide variety of different backgrounds. Benishek, Bieschke, Park and Slattery (2004, p.428) denote that ICT professional should have professional relationships that are aimed at achieving career development. In teams, they should act as mentors and also allow themselves to learn from the team members. They should realize that different professionals in the team come from different backgrounds and settings. Therefore, everyone in the team should be treated equally and with respect. All input from the team members should be considered and accepted as a positive input for professional development of everyone. ICT professionals must behave in a way that does not discriminate any member in the group irrespective of their age, race, gender, religion as well as ethnicity. ICT professionals working in teams should support the different career paths of individuals within the team (Casado-Lumbreras, Colomo-Palacios, Gómez-Berbís, & Garcia-Crespo 2009, p.293). This is one way of ensuring that every person in the group feels valued and recognized. Considering that every person has different goals to achieve and different knowledge that they bring in the team, ICT professionals in the team should appreciate the contribution of every member. They should be ready to learn from those who are more experienced in the group and give their contribution and guidance to those who are new in the team. This behavior is essential for a good working environment for all members of the team and especially the junior employees. ICT professionals working in a team should be able to interact with all the members in the group without any difficult. According to Kopcha (2010, p.175), ICT professionals are mentors in one way or the other. Therefore, they should realize the importance of interpersonal relationships with the other members of the team who come from different cultural backgrounds. They should embrace interacting with the other group members. The interactive process is important in a team to allow every member identify their differences with others, explore other people’s beliefs and values and exchange ideas while respecting their differences in backgrounds (Benishek et al 2004). Kelly (2015, p.1) states that a team’s real success is achieved by combining talent, effort, commitment and innovation. As a team member, I contributed to a sound team performance through supporting innovation, participating in setting team goals, priorities as well as encouraging every team member to attain their personal best as they keep their personal and team strategic goals in mind. To ensure my team worked better, I could have encouraged learning for the team members to increase productivity in the team. I could have helped others in my team to perform better by making them understand the kind of skill development they require and continuously work towards improvement in achieving goals. Other Items  What are your most memorable moments of PIIT, and why? My most memorable moments of PIIT are the lectures on ethics and privacy. The reason is that these are critical areas that affect my profession as an ICT person. I remember how my lectures introduced the topics like he knew what I required in my profession. I remember how I keen I was to grasp each and every detail of the lecture because these are very helpful topics in my life as an ICT professional.  What are some of the key professional roles and responsibilities for a modern ICT Professional? How might these affect you in your future work? The modern ICT professional has different key professional roles and responsibilities. They have a responsibility to provide insight into consequences of action. Bittner & Hornecker (2002 p,5) says that ICT professionals have a responsibility of preventing human failure in their practice. They should design technological artefacts that minimize risk as well as error. Modern ICT professionals have a role of taking action where it is suitable by providing alternative paths of action. They also have a responsibility for taking precaution as well as strict liability. PART B – IT-Related Issues The selected lectures are on the topics of ethics, privacy, group dynamics and Tech­­_Proficios. Ethics The topic of ethics impacted on me and the way I think about being an ICT professional when faced with specific issues. As an ICT professional, I have learned that ethics is an essential aspect of my everyday work as a person and when dealing with others. I have realized that I must observe ethics as it pertains to sharing of information of other people in any way. This has taught me the importance of seeking consent from people with who I have their information before using or sharing that information to the public. The issue of consent in ethics has impacted me and realized how detrimental it can be to share other people’s information without their consent. I have realized that ethics is very important to me an ICT professional and as an individual too. The lesson has impacted on how I think about my life. I should always foster good ethics if at all I want to gain the goodwill of the community. This is an initiative that will build on my reputation and always to maintain a good one in my profession. I think good ethics is essential to avoid unfavorable publicity which may hinder the success of my career. Good ethics will help me avoid ethical scandals in business. As an ICT professional I think it is important to create an ethical culture. With integrity, I am able to create ethical behavior in my workplace and how I operate. This is mostly applicable especially when I am working with teams. Using integrity, I am able to respect other members in the team and consider their desire. Privacy The topic of privacy has had an impact in my life as individual and as an ICT professional at the same time. As an individual, I have learned that it is important to ensure privacy of myself and that of other people. Privacy is defined as avoiding scrutiny of other people’s businesses. The topic of privacy helps me understand the need for not sharing other people information or details. As a professional, I should keep private information confidential. Learning about privacy has impacted on how I treat any information that I receive from other people. I now take privacy as a human right that must be respected as per the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 12 (United Nations 2015, p.1). As an ICT professional, my major responsibility is to place value on privacy when collecting and handling personal information. I think that personal information should not be collected when it is not necessary. If I have to collect it, then specific conditions must be met. I can say that the topic of privacy has taught me how to maintain confidentiality as a professional. Being able to maintain confidentiality is very important for an ICT professional like me. The reason is that one is able to gain trust from clients and also it is required by the law. From the topic of privacy, I have learned that privacy of information can be maintained to a certain levels. To my understanding, I think that there are situations that an organization or I as an ICT professional am allowed to disclose private information. Group Dynamics The lecture of group dynamics taught me a lot about teams. This learning session has impacted on my thinking as an individual and as an ICT professional. I think applying the lesson to my life has changed my performance. I now work in teams and focus my attention in building more teams. Working in teams has impacted positively in my profession. As a team, the success of our work is more than when I work alone. Therefore, I enjoy the benefit of aggregation through working in teams. I have also realized that I am able to experience diversity when working in teams. From the lesson, I learned that working in groups allows members to pool resources in terms of skills, attitudes as well as knowledge. I have experienced a combination of these resources is important in achieving different tasks in the workplace. Learning how to work in a team has helped me value the synergy that comes with group work. In my group, we are several individuals each with different thinking and solutions to tasks that we undertake. I think the synergy in the group helps me come up with answers that I need without putting a lot of effort. I have understood the need for working in teams to achieve increased effectiveness through cooperation as well as creative solutions to problems from diverse group members. However, while working in teams, I have learned to be careful to manage our differences that may cause tensions and conflicts in the group. Tech_Proficios Tech_Proficios was a lecture that has had a lot of impact in my life as an individual and an ICT professional. As an individual, the lesson helped understand that technology is a form of empowerment that I can use to develop myself and my society at large. In the perspective of an ICT professional, this topic was beneficial to me to a greater extend. The knowledge I have gained in ICT and as an IT proficient, it is possible to use this knowledge in a more positive social impact in the community and the world at large. Like the other topics, Tech_Proficios was a topic that I realized was well aligned with my career goals. It is a topic that teaches me how to use my ICT skill sets for social impact. This is a useful initiative that I can apply to benefit my community, family and other individuals. To me, I think it is an initiative that has changed the way I understood information technology and its purpose. Initially, I thought that technology is useful for managing information and work systems. I think I have gained more knowledge about technology and its purpose. Knowing that my skills are not only beneficial to me, my work, and my IT colleagues is important. I now understand that my IT knowledge can be expanded and applied in wider areas that can result to social impact. My IT skills are an empowerment to me so as to help others who are less advantaged than me. References Benishek, L., Bieschke, K., Park, J, & Slattery, S, 2004, A multicultural feminist model of mentoring, Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, Vol.32, pp.428-442. Bittner, P., & Hornecker, E, 2002, Responsibility and the Work of IT-Professionals: From Academia to Practice, Human Choice and Computers, IFIP World Computer Congress. Casado-Lumbreras, C., Colomo-Palacios, R., Gómez-Berbís, J., & Garcia-Crespo, A, 2009, Mentoring programmes: a study of the Spanish software industry, International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital, vol. 6, no.3, pp. 293-302. Kelly, A, 2015, 7 Ways to Improve Team Performance, Liquid Planner. Kopcha, T, 2010, A systems-based approach to technology integration using mentoring and communities of practice, Educational Technology Research and Development, Vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 175-190. Naqvi, S, & Bashir, S, 2011, IT-expert retention through organizational commitment: A study of public sector information technology professionals in Pakistan, Applied Computing and Informatics, Vol.11, pp.60–75. United Nations, 2015, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Preamble. Read More