Providing students with the latest knowledge and skills required to develop exciting careers

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Guest blog Cyrus Wong, Senior Lecturer and and Microsoft Learn for Educators Ambassador from the Department of Information Technology of IVE (Lee Wai Lee) in Hong Kong.

I am Cyrus Wong, senior lecturer from the Department of Information Technology of IVE (Lee Wai Lee) in Hong Kong. I am the programme leader of Higher Diploma in Cloud and Data Centre Administration which is a 2-year fulltime cloud computing major higher diploma offered by IVE IT Discipline. The picture above is my achievement at the Vocational Training Council (VTC) receiving a Teaching Excellence Award 2018/19.

“The IVE Information Technology Discipline (IT Discipline) offers a comprehensive range of IT programmes that provide students with the latest knowledge and skills required to develop exciting careers in this rapidly changing industry in Hong Kong. As a member of the VTC Group, the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE) is the leading vocational and professional education provider in Hong Kong, committed to nurturing professionals valued by industries. I love to teach and build hands projects with my students and my courses are very hands-on because we are a technical college, and our course targets to train students for cloud engineer roles.

Microsoft Learn for Educators (MSLE) Partnership & Impact

 

We have adopted Microsoft Learn curriculum especially because in addition to being high-quality content, it also provides many lab exercises for free. Currently, we have integrated 4 Microsoft Learn courses into the diploma – Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900), Azure Data Fundamentals (DP-900), Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900), and Azure Administrator(AZ-104). Students learn the 3 Fundamental level curriculums during year one summer semester. It is a core course, and all students must complete all lectures and hand on lab within 8 weeks. Students are also required to take the 3 MS Fundamentals certification exams as part of the course assessment. Microsoft Azure Administrator, which is an Advanced Role Based course, is part of a 2^nd year course in semester 1.

 

VTC and Microsoft Hong Kong have signed an MoU though Innovation & Technology Co-creation Centre and as a result of that we are able to offer our all our students Microsoft Fundamentals certification exam at a significant discount. The three Microsoft Certification exams are part of our course assessment. The big impact for Instructors is that we do not have to spend time in preparing questions and grade them for course assessment. And our students are now graduating with industry recognized certifications, which is adds to their employability prospects.

 

For the diploma or a course, we need to meet 2 important KPIs – number of students and employment rate. With MSLE, we can promote our diploma to recruit more students easily because all junior students are using Microsoft products every day and integration of Microsoft curriculum and certifications in the program only makes it more attractive. Azure skills are in huge demand in the Hong Kong region, and students can get jobs much more easily after they complete the MS curriculum and certification exams.
 

Our Plans For The Future

 

We joined the Microsoft Learn Educators program on June 17^th 2021, to date 63 of our students are certified on Microsoft Azure and have collectively received 103 certifications across Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900), Azure Data Fundamentals (DP-900), Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900), and Azure Administrator(AZ-104).

 

The graduates of the IT114115 Higher Diploma in Cloud and Data Centre Administration program have demonstrated the latest knowledge and skills in cloud computing. Many companies, including some big enterprises in Hong Kong have shared positive feedback about our student interns in providing effective technical support to their daily operations and development of their cloud systems. This is enabling VTC build longer term relationships and employment pipelines with these employers. Next we plan to collaborate with Microsoft Azure Partners and major customers for internship and employment pipelines for our students by developing relationships with local and regional businesses for direct career pathways

 
Students proudly demonstrating Microsoft Azure Fundamentals certifications

 

My teaching team are all Microsoft Azure Certified.

 

 

 

Students Comments

	“I am glad to be able to learn 3 Microsoft Learn courses at school and passed 3 Azure exam in one day at age 18! With those certifications, I got my internship offer at a global consulting firm as a cloud engineer.”
	“I got my graduate job as a cloud solution developer in one of the Microsoft Azure partners. I complete 4 Microsoft Azure courses at school and passed 3 Azure exams. My boss loves to recruit students with formal Azure training and now I start my MS tech stack career!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.