IT Literacy Project at Birkbeck
The IT Literacy Project at Birkbeck was TQEF funded (Teaching Quality Enhancement Fund) in 2003-4 to address the needs of some students to improve their computing skills to benefit them in their course of study. The materials produced within the Project are branded for student use as the 'IT Fitness Programme'.
Students: find out about accessing the IT Fitness Programme
There is a short (2 page) introduction to the IT Fitness Programmme (Adobe PDF format), what the Programme covers and details of how and where you can access the Programme materials.
There is also extensive paper documentation for the training modules that can be downloaded and printed off from the IT Fitness documentation page on the CCS web site.
CCS IT Literacy Project student workshops
For the start of the 2004-5 academic session, workshops based around the IT Literacy Project materials are being introduced.
Schools or Departments can request specifically tailored sessions for their students by contacting Peter Leffek.
Three generic workshops for students are also timetabled for 25, 26 and 27 October 2004 (5-6 p.m.) As the content is repeated in each workshop, you only need to attend once.
Details of the currently organised workshops are listed on this page.
Project materials available for 2005 session
Self assessment of IT skills and knowledge in computer awareness, email use, internet use, spreadsheets using Excel and word processing using Word.
Self paced tutorials are available in all these areas, plus presentations using PowerPoint.
All Office application tutorials are available in 2000 and 2003 versions.
You will need your CCS username and password to access the materials. To find out more, sign up for a workshop or inquire at CCS Help desk.
Project Steering Group Minutes and Reports
21 October 2003 | 10 December 2003 | 25 March 2004 | 24 June 2004 | 1 September 2004
An essential stage in the development of of the training modules was first of all to decide upon the source materials to be used. Consequently, a survey was undertaken of all currently available in-house paper based materials and materials from external providers to detirmine the most suitable materials.
The report of the findings on training material suitability is available for download here: Training report
Links to IT Literacy Projects and Materials at other UK Universities
CITScapes project (2000-2), JISC-funded and based at the University of Glasgow: link to CITScapes.
Oxford University online IT Literacy tests (to access, click the log in as visitor button): link to Oxford.
At the start of the project contacts were made with colleagues at a variety of other HE and FE institutions, where similar projects were undertaken. These included: Glasgow, Birmingham, UMIST, Surrey, East London and Bolton Institute. Primarily the purpose of this was to learn about their approaches to and problems encountered in creating and employing an IT Literacy Programme.
A key finding, particularly favoured by several institutions, was the format of assessment of knowledge and/or skills upon entry by means of a simple series of tests, and subsequent provision of tutorials to provide students with the means to improve their skills. It was also frequently commented upon that IT literacy projects achieve the best results for the students only when fully adopted and embedded within the curriculum structure of the academic programmes. At Birkbeck this is a point that is being addressed by those Schools adopting the materials for use. Any further Schools coming on board with using the materials will need to ensure this as well.