By investing in Novell Certified Linux ProfessionalSM certification, Singapore Management University was able to launch new Linux* courses for its students quickly and easy. The University now runs three separate Novell® training courses for its own students, helping them to build increasingly valuable open source skills for their future careers.
Singapore Management University (SMU) has more than 5,000 students across six schools: accountancy, business, economics, information systems, law and social sciences. The School of Information Systems (SIS) was established in 2003 to extend SMU's research and education activities into the realm of Information Technology & Systems. Since its inception, SIS has worked closely with Carnegie Mellon University to create a highly innovative approach to research and education.
SIS aims to provide students with an in-depth foundation for designing and applying information technology solutions in business settings. SIS has very strong working relationships with enterprises and IT service providers. This ecosystem of partners enables SIS to give its students both the breadth and depth of understanding required to know how IT is actually used in business settings.
In addition to core degree modules, SIS offers a number of optional "enrichment courses" that provide additional in-depth exposure to specific technologies and solutions. These courses are tremendously popular because they enable students to strengthen their skills, broaden their horizons, and make them more industry-relevant. Recognizing the growing importance of open source solutions across all industry sectors in the Asia Pacific region, SIS wanted to create a new course that would give students foundation skills in an enterprise-class Linux distribution.
Aiming to start introductory courses in SUSE® Linux Enterprise, SIS approached Novell for assistance. Novell and its local training partner, Global Software Academy Pte Ltd., provided intensive technology-transfer training for four SIS instructors, bringing them up to the Novell Certified Linux Professional (Novell CLP) certification standard.
"SMU's goal is to give our students the best possible grounding for successful careers, and we keep an open mind about specific technologies and vendors," said Heng Ngee Mok, Instructor, SIS. "We chose to work with Novell because SUSE Linux Enterprise is so widely used and so well respected by industry. We felt that SUSE Linux Enterprise would be a valuable addition to our students' resumés."
The Novell CLP certification is designed for Linux administrators, and covers a broad range of practical skills that can be applied to solve real-world business problems.
"The training provided by Global Software Academy was excellent, helping our instructors to get up to speed quickly," said Mok. "The Novell course materials are well-written, and the courses are correspondingly popular with our students."
Instructors at SMU now teach three Novell Linux courses - basic, intermediate and advanced. About 50 students participated in the very first offering of the course. Student enrolment will continue to grow each year, due to widespread student awareness that "Linux is important and cool". SMU is actively encouraging students to take the Novell CLP exam on completion of the courses.
"It's still early days, and the students are already very enthusiastic about taking the Novell courses," said Mok. "The intial participation rate of 5% of the whole SIS student population is more significant that it first sounds, because this is the very first offering and these are courses that do not give academic credits to students - so it's really a case of students getting involved in their own time."
By selecting Novell training for SUSE Linux Enterprise, SMU gained the internal know-how to run its own Linux courses for students. These students are now getting a solid grounding in a widely used, enterprise-class Linux distribution that is increasingly likely to feature in their future business careers.
"We're not biased one way or the other, but the reality is that open source software solutions are playing an increasingly important role across all economic sectors, especially in the Asia region," said Mok. "As such, we were sensing both a pull from the industy and a push from the students to offer this course. The Novell CLP courses gave our instructors all the necessary skills to help students strengthen their resumés with a working knowledge of Linux."
As part of its promotion of Linux and other open source technologies, Novell helps to subsidise the price of the course materials used by SMU students. "The pricing offered to us by Novell helps us to keep the Linux training courses accessible for all students," said Mok. "In the end, the whole open source community benefits as we increase the number of skilled people in the workforce."
The option to gain Linux certification helps SMU students to improve their employability and the scope of their future career options.
"With Novell's assistance, we have successfully introduced Linux training for our students, giving them a broader outlook for the future," said Mok.