Introduction

The Department was one of the first in the country to provide an IT skills course for its students and has now been doing so for eleven years. IT-MA is specifically designed to be accessible to those who have never used a computer before and/or are anxious about quantitative material, as well as being sufficiently flexible as to be challenging to those who have experience of computers and enjoy numbers in history. IT-MA is thus for all historians, whatever their persuasion (social, econom ic, political) or time period of interest.

IT-MA is thus designed to introduce historians to computers and to the many uses which they can make of computers and IT in their studies. It is also an innovative course unit in the sense that it is not based on lectures and contains important elements of self-learning.

IT skills, transferable skills and what you can hope to achieve
In a recent government report three ‘key skills’ were identified that all students should acquire during their time at university: ‘competence in communication, the application of numbers and information technology’. IT-MA, together with your other core units, is this department’s instrument for beginning the process of skills acquisition.

More particularly, by the end of this course unit you will have:

• acquired a good understanding of the use of the computer as an important tool for studying contemporary history;
• have been introduced to the principal classes of software which historians routinely use;
• learnt how to store and manage your own files and data;
• learnt how to use word processing to improve the content and presentation of your work;
• learnt how to use spreadsheets to investigate and present quantitative data;
• learnt how to use a database to sort and find information; and
• learnt how to access and navigate the internet and the world-wide-web.

To  IT-MA home page
To Department of Historical Studies home page.

(c)R. Middleton 1997.    Last Modified 4 September 2000.