Re-launching the Student Computer Literacy Programme

Introduction

To equip our students with the fundamental IT skills for their study, research and work after graduation, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) sees the need to boost their IT knowhow through basic and advanced computer training as a complement to their formal curriculum. To fulfill the above objective, the CSC has set up the Student Computer Literacy Programme (SCLP) since 1985 with a series of free IT short courses targeting new students.  In academic year 2009-10, 36 courses in 7 subject areas attracted around 1,350 applications from students.

According to students’ evaluations collected after classes last year:

• 97% of students showed their interests to the course
• 94% of students considered the quality of course materials was either good or excellent
• 93% of students found that the course was useful
• 91% of students concluded their overall impressions were from good to excellent

User Survey

In order to identify the IT training need of students, the CSC conducted an online survey during March 22-31 to collect suggestions and comments on SCLP courses from all staff and students.  Totally, 225 valid responses were received.  The following highlights the survey results:

• The most suitable length for a course session should be 2 or 3 hours
• Most find the training classes are better arranged in weekday evening or Saturday day time
• The top 10 courses chosen by students
  •  Microsoft Excel 2010 – Advanced
  • Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 – Advanced
  • Microsoft Word 2010 - Advanced
  • How to solve common PC problems and secure your computer
  • Microsoft Access 2010 – Advanced
  • Google Apps
  • Adobe Flash – Introduction
  • Introduction to Windows 7
  • Adobe Flash – Advanced
• ​​​​​​Many students showed interest in learning Adobe Photoshop
• Quality of SCLP courses was good and instructors were very professional
• Required different classes for different language speakers
• Requested to provide online training and further exercises

Based on survey results, the CSC has planned the following in year 2010-2011:

• The duration of most training sessions will be 3 hours, but some quick courses may still be 2 hours
• The training classes will be arranged on weekday evenings and Saturdays (both morning and afternoon)
• Courses to be continued include: Introduction and Advanced courses on Microsoft Office 2010, computer security, Windows 7, Google Apps and MS Live
• New courses to be included: Flash, Photoshop and Chinese Input Method (Chang Jie)
• Working within resource limits to plan classes in different languages for students to choose

New Website

At the same time, the SCLP website (http://literacy.cityu.edu.hk) has been rebuilt to satisfy the needs of students and meet the requirements of today’s website standard. To minimize the problems frequently encountered in web browsing, frames, pop-up windows and Flash Shockwave are avoided. In fact, various web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari, are able to browse the new website without any difficulties.  In addition, the new website not only supports the Windows environment, but also works well on Macintosh machine, iPhone and other smartphones.

Training Team

The User Services section of the CSC is responsible for the management of SCLP including course planning and administration, recruitment and coaching of student helpers, coordination of instructors and helpers, update of website, quality control, and other related activities. 

At the moment, course instructors and training materials are provided by contracted professional training companies which are appointed to deliver IT training courses to University staff.  As the class size can be as large as 80, some student helpers will provide assistance in the classes to ensure smoothness and effectiveness of course delivery. To equip student helpers with the required IT knowledge, internal training classes will be organized for the student helpers before each SCLP of the semester starts. 

Future Plan

As mentioned above, student helpers play an important role in course delivery.  As IT evolves quickly, the CSC is required to satisfy training need according to students’ feedbacks (received through emails, discussion forum, course evaluation and survey) and market trends.  A strong training team with sufficient experienced student helpers can surely shorten the time required to introduce new courses and revise existing ones. 

In fact, quality student helpers can perform more than simply as assistants in classes.  In 1999-2006, the CSC established a strong training team.  Team members were capable of teaching most of the courses, training new student helpers to take up their tasks and compiling course materials (including course notes, exercises, and presentation slide shows) under proper supervision.  Re-establishing such a strong training team is required. Indeed, allowing students helpers involved in these activities also provides a good training opportunity for them as well.

Although SCLP courses are repeated several times a year, some students might still have difficulties in finding a training session that fits their schedules.  In some occasions, the responses are too overwhelmed that there are not enough seats to accommodate all applications.  For these reasons, the CSC put SCLP courses online in 2002-2004 so that students could easily attend SCLP courses any time, any place and, most importantly, at their own pace.  These online courses were well received by students.  However, it requires a strong training team to create online courses as it is necessary to develop course materials, capture and converting all computer screens, mouse movements and actions into computer videos, and finally arrange experienced instructors to add in proper narration.  When the new training team is established, CSC can resume the publishing of online courses.

Conclusion

As demand keeps increasing, more training courses and classes are expected in the near future.  In this academic year, 16 training sessions before the start of Semester A and 13 training sessions in the first 3 weeks of Semester A have been organized, and over a thousand applications from students have already been received.  Re-launching the SCLP is not easy.  The most important step is to recruit sufficient potential student helpers, coach them patiently and build up a strong training team.  When this goal is achieved, the rest will be taken care of automatically.