Information Literacy (IL) refers to the skills needed to identify, locate, access, evaluate, communicate, and exploit information effectively. With the explosion of information available electronically, both good and bad, IL now plays a major role in all educational and industrial settings. We will concentrate in particular on IL as it relates to academic work.
Information Literacy encompasses many domains. Literacy means the ability to locate and use information to make decisions and to function in society, both personally and professionally. Computer Literacy means the ability to use computer hardware and applications to complete practical tasks associated with work, study, or daily activities. Digital Literacy is the ability to effectively and critically use digital technology to navigate, evaluate, and create information. It includes the ability to understand and use information that is presented in multiple formats or media.
Week 1 Professional communication tools covers professional communication tools, including collaboration support systems (MS Teams) and offline communication (e-mail) with an emphasis on correct and effective use of e-mail in professional contexts.
Week 2 Text processing is about handling text documents, and desktop publishing for reports and academic papers using MS Word.
Week 3 Presentation preparation discusses making professional presentations with 'overhead' slides using MS PowerPoint.
Week 4 Number processing covers the manipulation of numerical data using spreadsheets.
Week 5 File system organisation discusses the structure of files and directories in the computer's filesystem and how to organise your data within that structure.
Week 6 The command line looks at how to access, manage, and manipulate information stored on the computer using a mechanism that is more efficient and scalable than the graphical 'explorer' or 'finder' interface.
Week 7 Command sequencing covers the automation of routine tasks by writing small scripts that manipulate files and their contents.
Week 8 Shell variables is about manipulating the names of files using patterns.
Week 9 Conditionals and loops discusses automated tasks that behave differently depending on file name or content and which can scale to handling many thousands of files.
Week 10 The Internet introduces the main concepts of the Internet and the most important principles of its operation.
Week 11 Data mobility discusses moving data around between computers and how to access both data and applications remotely.
Week 12 The World Wide Web introduces the main concepts of 'the Web', the most important principles of its operation, and the various protocols and languages that make it work.
Week 13 Content creation looks at Web pages to see how they work and how to create them.
Week 14 Web applications and cloud services considers other applications and services that run 'on top of' the Web including various kinds of 'cloud' services, their benefits, and their risks.
Week 15 Safety and security discusses how to keep information safe and secure, both on your computer and when exposing it to the Internet or the Web.