In May 2001, I enrolled in Information Technology Institute (ITI) in Portland, Oregon. Nine months later I completed the curriculum and received an Applied Information Technology (AIT) certificate.

The ITI curriculum was developed out of their headquarters location in Halifax, Nova Scotia. They offer both an Applied IT Certificate as well as a Master of Education and Human Resourece Studies in partnership with Colorado State University, developing information technology education professionals.

Admission requires a Bachelor's degree in any field. The ITI curriculum utilizes collaborative and problem-based learning methodologies to develop technical, problem-solving, and project management skills, and prepares its graduates to be valuable, team-oriented members of the IT workplace.

The greatest asset I took away from my ITI experience (which I found to be as technically rigorous as either my B.A. in Chemistry or M.S. in Forest Products Technology) was the ability to repeatedly and routinely encounter new technologies, quickly assess their scope, employ a focused learning methodology and immediately begin putting these new skills to work on real IT problems.

The ITI curriculum is focused on four main areas (modules) of IT:

  • web
  • visual basic
  • java
  • DB2 (IBM's RDBMS)

An eight hour school day is divided into the following activities:

  • 3 hours of team time (around a table with 5 team members, working on a project)
  • 2 hours formal/conventional lecture
  • 3 hours independent study or continued project work

During and at the conclusion of each module, testing is given to assess skills acquisition and mastery. Each module concludes with project documentation and formal team presentations which showcase the completed project and are subject to peer and instructor evaluation/critique.

Go to iti.com for more information.