(Pic) John Quigley has been involved in delivering the standard basic IT course which mainstream students to the University have to complete if they have not reached the appropriate standard for a modern education. He is full of praise for the slim manual illustrated by screen shots that accompanies the course, so students can review their learning after each session. It was compiled by the joint universities of Glasgow. Learning is hands-on with tutor demonstration followed by students working through the appropriate section at their own pace

AIMS: to enable students to benefit from using IT in their studies; to consider the relevance of basic IT skills to their career development; to understand the general trends in IT.

OBJECTIVE: by the end of this course students will be able to demonstrate elementary competence in each of the IT components.

SESSION 1:
Parts of a computer; logging on; the P.C. desktop; formatting a disk; folders and documents; saving and copying; logging out.

SESSION 2:
E-mail - Eudora; managing documents; quitting applications; first assessment task.

SESSION 3:
THE INTERNET: THE WORLDWIDE WEB - Using a browser - Netscape - links - buttons - menus- bookmarks- introduction to searching
ONLINE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES: accessing University of Strathclyde Library; searching online; accessing Glasgow University Library SECOND ASSESSMENT TASK: Searching the Web for sites relevant to your studies; saving the result as a text file; opening MS Word; inserting the Web text file.

SESSION 4:
WORD PROCESSING:creating documents; saving documents; inserting one document into another; printing documents
MS WORD: simple editing and formatting; headers and footers; text checking tools; file formats; tabs
HELP SYSTEMS: how to access Help Systems; MS Word Help system
STARTING THIRD ASSESSENT TASK: Opening a new MS word file called Student; inserting Impressions file; editing and formatting text; adding header and footer; text checking file; setting tabs.

SESSION 5:
FURTHER ASPECTS OF MS WORD : symbols; Equation Editor; clipart; text wrapping drawing tools
COPYING TEXT AND GRAPHICS FROM THE WEB: saving as a source file; saving as a text file; copying text from the Web; copying graphics from the Web.
CONTINUING THIRD ASSIGNMENT: inserting symbols; using the Equation Editor; text wrapping; using the drawing tools; adding clipart; adding text from the Web; copying a graphic from the Web.

SESSION 6:
INTRODUCTION TO EXCEL: what is a spreadsheet? entering data; editing and formatting data; calculations; graphs and charts
COMPLETION OF THIRD ASSIGNMENT:creating a graph in a spreadsheet; graph text layout; print out student file
TAKING IT FURTHER: practice materials; Open access areas; using online tutorials; using email regularly; take another course; explore other applications; enjoying using IT!

The above course is very similar to the basic IT course offered in the Learning in Later Life programme. John also teaches in this programme in addition to working as a buddy and in the Club environment.