Hi all,
As many of you know, I've been wondering for quite some time about the basic information studies literacy we should be teaching across programmes at the university (i.e. not just humanities computing, but more broadly what should university graduates know as basic information literacy).
We're looking into establishing a campus wide certification in informatics here which we have the luxury of building more or less ex nihilo--i.e. lots of willing people and departments, very few existing institutional silos and/or jealousies that need to be worked in or around. The goal is to build this as a companion programme--something like a big minor, a certification, or an emphasis--that would in theory be open to combination any domain baccalaureate. In the end you could graduate with "English and informatics", or "Biology and informatics," etc. The informatics certification would not be intended to cover all possible informatics angles (so somebody doing bio-informatics or advanced humanities computing would have to do additional work). But the goal would be to produce students with domain competency and a core set of informatics skills and knowledge.
I am looking at some existing programmes--e.g. Melbourne, Syracuse, etc. But I'm also asking people helping put the programme together to think on the basis of a blank page: what skills, knowledge, experience should an undergraduate have when they finish such a programme. Here are some of mine. What do others think?
* Knowledge of basic internet infrastructure and protocols: what a server is, how pages are served out, what packets are, how domain-names are registered and looked up, all the various transfer protocols * Knowledge of basic languages and standards like xml, html, unicode * Experience in setting up a multipage interactive website at an arbitrary domain name (i.e. buy a domain name, point it at an IP address, set up the server, write the pages * Knowledge of the major genres and applications and an ability to analyse existing sites in terms of their use of these (e.g. know what a wiki is, newserver, version control, other things) * Have some sense of constraints that affect the use of cyberspace: gender, economic, legal issues, etc. * Have a knowledge of various social organisations and processes on the web: communities of practice, crowd sourcing * Be able to analyse information flows and other aspects of a problem and design technological solutions to it * some experience with data design, analysis, and retrieval
These seem to me to be too much of a mishmash of different types of scope, categories, and the like. And also too much focussed on the type of thing I do. Any suggestions for the skills, knowledge, and experience a typical undergraduate ought to have if they were to be certified as being basically competent in contemporary web technologies alongside their core domain?
-dan
Hello Dan! You may be interested to know that French student are proposed the C2i, or "Certificat Informatique et Internet". It's a national certification organized in the universities, with the adequate lectures (it follows a B2i or "Brevet Informatique et Internet", delivered in high school / secondary school). In my "Alma Mater", I know students can try to pass the C2i level 1 at the end of their 1st year, but it's often tough to them and many fail (they can try again). You'll find some more information in English here: http://www2.c2i.education.fr/sections/en/presentation/ including a referential of the general and transverse skills mandatory for the "basic" C2i http://www2.c2i.education.fr/sections/en/c2il1/c2i1ref You'll see that there are several C2i "options", for teachers and several fields of studies (sadly, humanities are not one of them). The C2i is well planned in France now, with many expert trainers, and if you want to get in touch with experimented C2i teachers / examinators I'd be happy to try and act as a go between and direct you to some contacts.
Good luck :) Marjorie
Dan O'Donnell a écrit :
Hi all,
As many of you know, I've been wondering for quite some time about the basic information studies literacy we should be teaching across programmes at the university (i.e. not just humanities computing, but more broadly what should university graduates know as basic information literacy).
We're looking into establishing a campus wide certification in informatics here which we have the luxury of building more or less ex nihilo--i.e. lots of willing people and departments, very few existing institutional silos and/or jealousies that need to be worked in or around. The goal is to build this as a companion programme--something like a big minor, a certification, or an emphasis--that would in theory be open to combination any domain baccalaureate. In the end you could graduate with "English and informatics", or "Biology and informatics," etc. The informatics certification would not be intended to cover all possible informatics angles (so somebody doing bio-informatics or advanced humanities computing would have to do additional work). But the goal would be to produce students with domain competency and a core set of informatics skills and knowledge.
I am looking at some existing programmes--e.g. Melbourne, Syracuse, etc. But I'm also asking people helping put the programme together to think on the basis of a blank page: what skills, knowledge, experience should an undergraduate have when they finish such a programme. Here are some of mine. What do others think?
- Knowledge of basic internet infrastructure and protocols: what a
server is, how pages are served out, what packets are, how domain-names are registered and looked up, all the various transfer protocols
- Knowledge of basic languages and standards like xml, html, unicode
- Experience in setting up a multipage interactive website at an
arbitrary domain name (i.e. buy a domain name, point it at an IP address, set up the server, write the pages
- Knowledge of the major genres and applications and an ability to
analyse existing sites in terms of their use of these (e.g. know what a wiki is, newserver, version control, other things)
- Have some sense of constraints that affect the use of cyberspace:
gender, economic, legal issues, etc.
- Have a knowledge of various social organisations and processes on
the web: communities of practice, crowd sourcing
- Be able to analyse information flows and other aspects of a problem
and design technological solutions to it
- some experience with data design, analysis, and retrieval
These seem to me to be too much of a mishmash of different types of scope, categories, and the like. And also too much focussed on the type of thing I do. Any suggestions for the skills, knowledge, and experience a typical undergraduate ought to have if they were to be certified as being basically competent in contemporary web technologies alongside their core domain?
-dan
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
In Britain (and probably elsewhere in Europe) there is the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL). See for example the page at my University:
http://www.liv.ac.uk/csd/training/ecdl/index.htm
or the general site:
http://www.ecdl.org/publisher/index.jsp
Cynics might say it is simply about training people to use all the Microsoft Office packages.
Looking at the information there seems indeed to be a much greater emphasis on using desktop packages than on teaching generic IT skills.
Godfried
-- Dr. Godfried Croenen Director of Graduate Studies School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies University of Liverpool Chatham Street Liverpool L69 7ZR United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)151 794 2763 Fax: +44 (0)151 794 2357 e-mail: G.Croenen@Liverpool.ac.uk Personal webpage: http://www.liv.ac.uk/~gcroenen/index.htm Research webpage: http://www.liv.ac.uk/info/staff/A69646
-----Original Message----- From: dm-l-bounces@uleth.ca [mailto:dm-l-bounces@uleth.ca] On Behalf Of Marjorie Burghart Sent: 27 February 2009 20:17 To: dm-l@uleth.ca Subject: Re: [dm-l] Ideal informatics training [TAN, maybe]
Hello Dan! You may be interested to know that French student are proposed the C2i, or "Certificat Informatique et Internet". It's a national certification organized in the universities, with the adequate lectures (it follows a B2i or "Brevet Informatique et Internet", delivered in high school / secondary school). In my "Alma Mater", I know students can try to pass the C2i level 1 at the end of their 1st year, but it's often tough to them and many fail (they can try again). You'll find some more information in English here: http://www2.c2i.education.fr/sections/en/presentation/ including a referential of the general and transverse skills mandatory for the "basic" C2i http://www2.c2i.education.fr/sections/en/c2il1/c2i1ref You'll see that there are several C2i "options", for teachers and several fields of studies (sadly, humanities are not one of them). The C2i is well planned in France now, with many expert trainers, and if you want to get in touch with experimented C2i teachers / examinators I'd be happy to try and act as a go between and direct you to some contacts.
Good luck :) Marjorie
Dan O'Donnell a écrit :
Hi all,
As many of you know, I've been wondering for quite some time about
the
basic information studies literacy we should be teaching across programmes at the university (i.e. not just humanities computing, but more broadly what should university graduates know as basic information literacy).
We're looking into establishing a campus wide certification in informatics here which we have the luxury of building more or less ex nihilo--i.e. lots of willing people and departments, very few
existing
institutional silos and/or jealousies that need to be worked in or around. The goal is to build this as a companion programme--something like a big minor, a certification, or an emphasis--that would in theory be open to combination any domain baccalaureate. In the end
you
could graduate with "English and informatics", or "Biology and informatics," etc. The informatics certification would not be
intended
to cover all possible informatics angles (so somebody doing bio-informatics or advanced humanities computing would have to do additional work). But the goal would be to produce students with domain competency and a core set of informatics skills and knowledge.
I am looking at some existing programmes--e.g. Melbourne, Syracuse, etc. But I'm also asking people helping put the programme together
to
think on the basis of a blank page: what skills, knowledge,
experience
should an undergraduate have when they finish such a programme. Here are some of mine. What do others think?
- Knowledge of basic internet infrastructure and protocols: what a
server is, how pages are served out, what packets are, how domain-names are registered and looked up, all the various transfer protocols
- Knowledge of basic languages and standards like xml, html, unicode
- Experience in setting up a multipage interactive website at an
arbitrary domain name (i.e. buy a domain name, point it at an IP address, set up the server, write the pages
- Knowledge of the major genres and applications and an ability to
analyse existing sites in terms of their use of these (e.g. know what a wiki is, newserver, version control, other things)
- Have some sense of constraints that affect the use of cyberspace:
gender, economic, legal issues, etc.
- Have a knowledge of various social organisations and processes on
the web: communities of practice, crowd sourcing
- Be able to analyse information flows and other aspects of a problem
and design technological solutions to it
- some experience with data design, analysis, and retrieval
These seem to me to be too much of a mishmash of different types of scope, categories, and the like. And also too much focussed on the type of thing I do. Any suggestions for the skills, knowledge, and experience a typical undergraduate ought to have if they were to be certified as being basically competent in contemporary web technologies alongside their core domain?
-dan
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- Marjorie BURGHART EHESS (pôle de Lyon) / UMR 5648 Histoire et Archéologie des Mondes Chrétiens et Musulmans Médiévaux 18 quai Claude Bernard 69007 Lyon - FRANCE
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Croenen, Godfried wrote:
In Britain (and probably elsewhere in Europe) there is the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL). See for example the page at my University:
http://www.liv.ac.uk/csd/training/ecdl/index.htm
or the general site:
We used to teach this here, but found demand was dropping as more and more of the "digital natives" came on stream.
Cynics might say it is simply about training people to use all the Microsoft Office packages.
They would be right. On the other hand, there's no reason why the same course could not be customized to impart the same skills using e.g. Open Office. It should be all about transferable skills, surely!
Looking at the information there seems indeed to be a much greater emphasis on using desktop packages than on teaching generic IT skills.
Now there's a distinction worth unpacking. I assume that "desktop" packages are also the same as the things I use on my laptop, so what exactly are "generic" IT skills? command line abilities? knowing about the hardware? programming? project management? systems analysis and database design? These seem a bit ambitious for such a course!
I'd like to thank contributors for the information on programmes and standards they've passed on. This is going to be very helpful. And I appreciate any others: I'll be putting together suggestions for the committee next weekend.
I found this "driver's licence" interesting, as indeed Lou's comments about the change coming with the arrival of more digital natives. I have been deeply impressed in the last year or two at the on-going changes in how our students work with computers. I think we really are just now getting first years who really can't imagine what it was like without the net, computers, and social networking. Even our fourth year students seem less native in their interactions.
The range between basic desktop apps and dbms is what we are trying to negotiate here. I'm thinking the answer might be to have a "driver's licence" type course as something that many students who are not interested in adding an informatics component to their degrees might find useful. And I am still amazed at how shallow some of the student's knowledge of basic office software really is.
But for the larger programme in informatics, it is exactly the issues Lou mentions at the end that are the skills we're considering:
knowing about the hardware? programming? project management? systems analysis and database design
The goal is that in a programme of eight or nine semester-long, North American style 3-credit courses, our students would graduate with an understanding of how ICT can be applied to research questions in their home domain, have some experience analysing information flow, in project management, HCI, and various other topics that would leave them equipped not so much to become ICT technicians or experts, but domain experts who would know enough about ICT to allow them to apply it intelligently and work with ICT technical experts in solving problems and designing solutions.
I'm hoping that we might find a variety of different paths in this area: one aimed at producing students with the type of skills we associate with programme at CCH or the University of Alberta (to name two) on the one hand, but that can also accommodate students with interest in other aspects of informatics or who only want to brush up immediately necessary skills.
Apart from perhaps a remedial course on standalone software, I think we'd be aiming primarily at covering networked technologies. And re Word--I'm also wondering if we could responsibly take an ideologically open source position without it becoming "tenured radicals" pushing their hobby horses.
Lou Burnard wrote:
Croenen, Godfried wrote:
In Britain (and probably elsewhere in Europe) there is the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL). See for example the page at my University:
http://www.liv.ac.uk/csd/training/ecdl/index.htm
or the general site:
We used to teach this here, but found demand was dropping as more and more of the "digital natives" came on stream.
Cynics might say it is simply about training people to use all the Microsoft Office packages.
They would be right. On the other hand, there's no reason why the same course could not be customized to impart the same skills using e.g. Open Office. It should be all about transferable skills, surely!
Looking at the information there seems indeed to be a much greater emphasis on using desktop packages than on teaching generic IT skills.
Now there's a distinction worth unpacking. I assume that "desktop" packages are also the same as the things I use on my laptop, so what exactly are "generic" IT skills? command line abilities? knowing about the hardware? programming? project management? systems analysis and database design? These seem a bit ambitious for such a course!
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Dan, one of the UG modules we run here at CCH is an Introduction to Digital Humanities http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/depts/cch/ug/modules/av1003/ (follow the link for teaching materials for what we actually cover)
Many would like to see this or something similar rolled out as a core component of all UG Humanities degree programmes.
For a programme that integrates DH stuff in a wider humanities programme see the Informatica Umanistica course at Pisa http://infouma.di.unipi.it/specialistica/index.asp
Simon
Dan O'Donnell wrote:
Hi all,
As many of you know, I've been wondering for quite some time about the basic information studies literacy we should be teaching across programmes at the university (i.e. not just humanities computing, but more broadly what should university graduates know as basic information literacy).
We're looking into establishing a campus wide certification in informatics here which we have the luxury of building more or less ex nihilo--i.e. lots of willing people and departments, very few existing institutional silos and/or jealousies that need to be worked in or around. The goal is to build this as a companion programme--something like a big minor, a certification, or an emphasis--that would in theory be open to combination any domain baccalaureate. In the end you could graduate with "English and informatics", or "Biology and informatics," etc. The informatics certification would not be intended to cover all possible informatics angles (so somebody doing bio-informatics or advanced humanities computing would have to do additional work). But the goal would be to produce students with domain competency and a core set of informatics skills and knowledge.
I am looking at some existing programmes--e.g. Melbourne, Syracuse, etc. But I'm also asking people helping put the programme together to think on the basis of a blank page: what skills, knowledge, experience should an undergraduate have when they finish such a programme. Here are some of mine. What do others think?
- Knowledge of basic internet infrastructure and protocols: what a
server is, how pages are served out, what packets are, how domain-names are registered and looked up, all the various transfer protocols
- Knowledge of basic languages and standards like xml, html, unicode
- Experience in setting up a multipage interactive website at an
arbitrary domain name (i.e. buy a domain name, point it at an IP address, set up the server, write the pages
- Knowledge of the major genres and applications and an ability to
analyse existing sites in terms of their use of these (e.g. know what a wiki is, newserver, version control, other things)
- Have some sense of constraints that affect the use of cyberspace:
gender, economic, legal issues, etc.
- Have a knowledge of various social organisations and processes on the
web: communities of practice, crowd sourcing
- Be able to analyse information flows and other aspects of a problem
and design technological solutions to it
- some experience with data design, analysis, and retrieval
These seem to me to be too much of a mishmash of different types of scope, categories, and the like. And also too much focussed on the type of thing I do. Any suggestions for the skills, knowledge, and experience a typical undergraduate ought to have if they were to be certified as being basically competent in contemporary web technologies alongside their core domain?
-dan
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Il giorno sab, 28/02/2009 alle 12.55 +0000, Simon Mahony ha scritto:
For a programme that integrates DH stuff in a wider humanities programme see the Informatica Umanistica course at Pisa http://infouma.di.unipi.it/specialistica/index.asp
You beat me to that one ;) If you need more details/translation just ask Dan.
Ciao
Roberto
Dear Dan,
Over here in Cologne, Germany, we have a special chair for "Humanities Computer Science" which is involved in a number of BA/MA programs. Beside these, it offers an "IT Certificate" for students in the humanities faculty (students from the specialized degree programs, i.e., media informatics, digital media and cultural heritage studies, and information processing in the humanities are excluded).
The certificate for the "normal" humanities student includes the following four courses: - Course 1, common technologies I: operating systems, office applications (e.g. open office), image processing, webserver (installation, configuration, maintenance) - Course 2, common technologies II: networks, internet technologies, html/css/javascript, programming by example (PHP), online databases by example (MySQL) - all applied in a hands-on course project ("transform a humanities information resource (a.k.a. "book") into an online database") - Course 3, dedicated systems: CMS by example (Typo3), digital repository systems by example (DSpace) - Course 4, data- and metadata standards: XML (with Schema and XPath), XSLT, metadata theory, data standards in the humanities and the cultural heritage sector, DC, TEI, METS/MODS, EAD, CDWA, semantic web, RDF, OWL - X-technologies and TEI applied in a hands-on course project ("transform a humanities information resource (a.k.a. "book") into a markup-based and XSLT-generated online presentation").
You can find further information here: http://www.hki.uni-koeln.de/lehrveranstaltungen
Best, Patrick Sahle
Lecturer in Humanities IT, University of Cologne, Germany Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Informationsverarbeitung, Universität zu Köln Universitätsstraße 22, D-50923 Köln, +49 - (0)221 - 470 1750 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Institute for Documentology and Scholarly Editing / Institut für Dokumentologie und Editorik: http://www.i-d-e.de
-
Croenen, Godfried -
Dan O'Donnell -
Lou Burnard -
Marjorie Burghart -
Patrick Sahle -
Roberto Rosselli Del Turco -
Simon Mahony