WhatsIT? An Online Information Technology Course

Information Technology has become a driving force and an important tool in all aspects of higher education. Teaching, learning, and the workplace have been permeated with aspects of information delivered via technologies that did not exist a short ten years ago. Arts Instructional Support and Information Technology (Arts ISIT) is striving to provide an IT environment to staff, students and faculty that slows them to acquire and continuously re-calibrate IT skills and over course of time, achieve mastery. It is our goal to give students and faculty the opportunity to acquire a set of transferable IT skills as part of their experience of learning and teaching at UBC. These skills will increase the educational competence and marketability of students with an Arts degree and prepare students and faculty to take advantage of the ever increasing number of digital repositories available on all academic topics. To accomplish this goal, we will employ a two pronged approach: we will develop an online course that allows users to teach themselves the basics of information technology needed in their academic studies. Secondly we will provide face to face training for the increasing number of students and faculty who see themselves challenged and exposed to the application of new learning technologies. The proposed IT online course will offer two levels of instruction: one strand, where users learn basic functions and functionality, and an advanced level where users are exposed to more complex concepts of information technology and learning technologies.

Ulrich Rauch, Arts ISIT, Faculty of Arts
Ralph Matthews, Chair, Arts ISIT, Faculty of Arts