COM3HALLAM@TRENT.AC.UK (Susan Hallam - IT Coordinator) (02/21/90)
Further to Chuck Darney's message about computing at Widener, I find that we have similar experiences here at Nottingham Polytechnic (UK.) As the IT Coordinator to the Faculty, my two chief responsibilities are to contribute to the introduction and improvement of IT elements in courses within the faculty, and to contribute to staff development in computing and staff use of IT in research in the Faculty. Needless to say, I have had mixed success... Our first year course of study is being amended to include "core skills" such as mooting, presentation skills, and computing. Due to the number of students, we will offer each student 2-hour workshops twice during the term. In this limited period of time, we hope to cover basic keyboard skills and wordprocessing, with introduction to databases and spreadsheets (ambitious, eh?!) At the moment, I am scheduled to do this teaching as no staff in the Law School feel experienced enough to teach basic computing skills. Has anyone had experience of doing service teaching like this, and do the students take it as seriously as if one of "their own" lecturers taught it? Was there an assessed element? We have a range of 9 CAL programs (written in house using Staf2) running on a VAX. I would be interested in hearing of other CAL projects using authoring languages on a PC (such as TopClass.) I am aware of Hypertext projects that are being developed at the moment, and would like to hear more about projects in America. Finally on the software front, has any educational establishment acquired any commercial software intended for law practices. Would anybody be interested in negotiating cheapo site licenses? So many issues to discuss on this bulletin board: - policies concerning the IBM / Macintosh debate - staff development programs? - advisory groups with both law faculty and computing reps (PS - I am a graduate of Penn State and Drexel U, and an expat living in Nottingham. All the familiar names like Widener & Millersville give me the odd pang of homesickness... !)