The committee on the use of communications and information technology in learning and teaching surveyed staff to assess the IT skills base in the University and to determine what training is required.
They found that most staff have the necessary skills in word processing and email to meet the needs of their employment but that further training may increase productivity.
It was noted that training will be required on the new University wide email system to be introduced in summer 2003. The survey indicated that training was needed on spreadsheets, databases, presentation skills, statistics, web publishing, CODA, the personnel system and the VLE.
14% of respondents were content to have training delivered by independent learning via the web but 50% preferred to be trained by the more conventional and costly tutor-led classroom course.
The main barriers to the use of C& IT were all time related: time to undertake training (355 responses), time to implement current IT skills (167) and preparation time (146) although lack of technical support for hardware (146) and the cost of training (141) also registered as significant barriers.
The questionnaire survey was closed at the end of February 2002 by which time 495 on-line records were received and 162 paper-based responses. The full report can be obtained from Dr Eric Monaghan, academic affairs, 6th floor, tower building.