[SigLT-L] Study Profiles Computer Literacy Education Efforts of 9 Higher Ed Institutions

[Primarydat at aol.com]

Primary Research Group has published a new report – Trends in Training 
College 
Faculty, Staff  & Students In Computer Literacy, ISBN 1-57440-085-1 – that 
explores how  technology trainers and educators at American colleges are 
planning to improve  the computer literacy skills of faculty, staff and students.  
The report presents case studies from  nine institutions of higher education, 
including--  Brooklyn Law School, Florida State  University College of  
Medicine, The  Tuskegee Institute, University of West Georgia, Clemson, Indiana 
University  Southeast, Texas Christian, and others.  
At Texas Christian, a new technology lab devoted to teaching new media  
writing, established and run by professors from the University’s English  
Department, has challenged some of the traditional notions of what writing  education 
should be.  
For the Teaching and Learning Technology Group, a non-profit corporation  
that counsels colleges in proper technology instruction and implementation,  
cross-departmental and administrative collaboration is a key factor.  Technology 
literacy is a philosophy, not  just a program of study, and continuous needs 
assessment, always focused on  educational outcomes, followed up by action at 
all levels, is the key to  success. 
Indiana University Southeast has developed a new informatics major that  
fills a gap between casual information technology training, inadequate for many  
students, and the computer science major, insufficiently practical for  some. 
Florida State University College of Medicine has developed a highly  detailed 
and integrated informatics program for medical students; the program is  
integrated into virtually every course offered by the College.  For  Florida  
State, the key has been broad  institutional support, including the provision of 
laptops to students, as well  as the necessary support personnel to service 
them. 
At the South Carolina Center of Excellence for  Instructional Technology 
Training at  Clemson  University, the mission is to support  teacher training and 
teacher preparation.  Chris Peters, the  director of the Center, notes that 
its mission, like that of the Indiana  University Southeast informatics program, 
is to allow IT professionals to assume  some of the load of teaching 
technology-related classes within a particular  discipline, in this case, K-12 teacher 
training. 
At the University of  West Georgia, Melanie Clay, the  Director of Distance 
Learning, has found success in training the hundreds of  distance learning 
instructors employed by the college by taking a cue from  Japanese auto 
manufacturers, whose just-in-time inventory management methods  significantly improved 
efficiency in auto manufacturing.  
The Appalachian College Association, an organization set up largely to  
improve the quality of instruction in higher education in  Appalachia, developed a 
novel approach to computer  literacy, by educating both instructor and student 
together. Martin Ramsay,  Chief Technologist for the organization, won a 
grant to develop a special  program that pairs professor and student in a 
three-day technology  workshop 
At the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, technology coordinator Jacqueline  
McArthur has been able to increase the number of regular Blackboard users among 
faculty from  twenty five to one hundred and twenty five in just a few months. 
At Brooklyn  Law  School, the development of a training  oriented computer 
laboratory, combined with discreet but timely marketing, has  helped to break 
down the walls between technology end users and trainers.  Lloyd Carew-Reid, a 
technology-training  specialist at the School, believes that timely marketing – 
through brown bag  lunches, scheduled visits, and short but highly focused 
drop in sessions – are  keys to taking technology training to the end user. 
For more information about the report, visit our website at  
www.primaryresearch.com 




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