by Vania Chan, UBC-Okanagan

1. What Technology Skills Do Students
Need to Learn To Be Successful in
Post-Secondary Studies and How Can
Institutions Help?
Vania Chan
UBC’s Okanagan Campus
ETUG Spring Workshop 2014

2. UBC’s Okanagan Campus

3. UBC’s Okanagan Campus
• 7800 undergrads
• 640 grad students

4. Learning & Technology Assistants
• “LTAs”
• A team of 14 students
• Stationed in the library
• On the front lines of student
technology support

5. The Study
-An online questionnaire
-In-person interviews
-Focus group

6. Highlights of the Results

7. Most common questions
• Printing, printing, and more printing!!
• Microsoft Word and Excel
• Working with PDFs
• Accessing wifi and workstations
• Troubleshooting

8. What tech skills do students need?
• Productivity software
• Research skills
• Communication etiquette
• Social media awareness

9. Productivity Software
Quote:
“As part of a business diploma program years ago, I
was required to take two 100 level courses in Microsoft
Office (Word, Excel, Access, and Outlook). I still use
these skills regularly to this day. In the science
program, I was never exposed to the same training
and don't know how I would have survived if I
hadn't learned during another program. In sciences
in particular, we are regularly required to create graphs
of lab results and most students I know spent more
time fighting with Excel than writing the report. This
could be extremely valuable training.”

10. Productivity Software
• MS Office
• Not taught within their classes or
labs, but students are expected to
be proficient
• Wish for class time devoted to these
skills or a technology bootcamp
series

11. Research
• Use of online journal databases
• Conducting an effective web search
• Citation tools

12. Communication Etiquette
• How to communicate effectively over
email
• Organizing and formatting
information
• Understanding audience and tone
• Using proper salutations and
closings

13. Social media awareness
• Concerns about privacy, out of
context impressions, and guilt by
association
• Want to leverage social media to
market themselves

14. Awareness and Attitudes of Trends
• Asked about flexible, blended and
online learning
• Concerns about lack of interaction in
online learning
• Heard about MOOCs, but not
interested

15. Implications for Teaching & Learning
• Flexible learning
– Troubleshooting and support
– Scaffolding of the technology
• Instructor expectations

16. Discussion
• What are the technical expectations
we have of our students?
• Are assessments practices matching
their technical proficiency?
• Are faculty aware of students’
proficiency levels?
• At your school, what avenues do
students have to learn technical
skills? What supports are available?

17. Thank you!
vania.chan@ubc.ca
Centre for Teaching and Learning
UBC’s Okanagan Campus