IT degree studies and skills development for learning organisations

This paper is not an exploration of learning organisations as such. It considers the industry’s information technoloy and systems (IT/IS) skill requirements in relation to the notion of organisational learning as double loop learning in order to understand the manifold nature of IT careers. The paper reviews the data from an ongoing empirical study among university IT students, which aimed at exploring the reasons for low female participation in IT studies, and also examined female students’ strategies for coping with IT studies. Of particular interest is how students’ views of IT as an area of study and as a career are being affected by the IT study environment, and the implications of this for learning organisations. Examples have been drawn upon to highlight the complexities involved for particularly female students in negotiating the learning environment of an Australian based IT degree.