Table I. IT skills appropriate for the general undergraduate electronic-learning environment (8).

Electronic mail Email attachments Discussion lists; Electronic bulletin boards Telnet, FTP or Gopher sites Web download links Instructional management systems etc

Table II. IT skills appropriate for the undergraduate electronic-learning environment in chemistry (9).

Electronic mail Discussion lists; Electronic bulletin boards Word Processing Spreadsheets / Graphing Molecular modelling WWW searching

Table III. Extract of a physical chemistry article showing the use of superscripts, subscripts, mathematical symbols, Greek letters and equations (15).

A simple harmonic valence force field, consisting of harmonic stretches, bends and torsions, was used to describe the propane substrate: (4) The first two terms have been defined previously.15,58,59 The harmonic stretching and bending force constants were obtained by the empirical prescription of Lindner:60 kstr,CC = 4.705 ¥ 102 J m-2, kstr,CH = 4.702 ¥ 102 J m-2, kbend,CCH = 6.67 ¥ 10-17 J rad-2, and kbend,HCH = 5.61 ¥ 10-17 J rad-2. The final term in Eqn (4) is a 3-fold methyl torsional potential which was assumed to be: (5) The torsional angles tij are the nine H-C-C-H or H-C-C-C dihedral angles for each of the i-th C-C bonds.

Table IV. Percentage of students entering university with a general IT skills (1-3).
Year		1998	2000		2001
Survey		School (2)	U Sydney (3)	Deakin U (1) and this study		UWA this study
Ability to use the WWW		75	82	87	94	93
Ability to use email		59		85	92	93
Ability to use a word processor		93	89	99	98	97
Ability to use a spreadsheet		47	50	88	77	62
Reference (2) is a study by Meredyth et al. of Year 10 secondary students across Australia in 1998. These students were in the 4th year of secondary school and would have formed the majority of the students who started university in 2001. Reference (3) was a survey of all undergraduate students who entered the University of Sydney in 2000. Reference (1) was a survey of all students enrolled in 1st semester freshman (1st year) chemistry. In each case, the results were not obtained through objective testing, but are the students' (subjective) perceptions of their own abilities.

Table V. Cross tabulation of percentage of students at Deakin University who have knowledge about Web addresses (URLs) and general Web usage.
			Knowledge of Web usage
			2000			2001
Know-ledge of URLs			Do not know	Know		Do not know	Know
	Do not know		9	21		5	7
	Know		2	68		1	87
2000 data is taken from our 2000 survey (1).

Table VI. Cross tabulation of percentage of students who have knowledge about reading PDF files and general Web usage in 2001.
			Knowledge of Web usage
			U Western Australia			Deakin University
Knowledge of reading PDF files			Do not know	Know		Do not know	Know
	Do not know		6	45		3	65
	Know		1	49		1	31

Table VII. Cross tabulation of percentage of students who have knowledge about email attachments and downloading files from the WWW in 2001.
			Knowledge of downloading files from the WWW
			U Western Australia			Deakin University
Knowledge of email attachments			Do not know	Know		Do not know	Know
	Do not know		22	15		26	17
	Know		6	58		5	52

Table VIII. Percentage of UWA students expressing preferences for on-line versus written tests in 2001.
Written testing		Written testing		%
Only preference				12
Preferred		Possible		37
No preference				39
Possible		Preferred		12
		Only preference		0

Table IX. Percentage of Deakin University students with various levels of skill for specific skills associated with word-processing in 2001.
	Use of superscripts and subscripts	Use of special characters and symbols	Use of equations	Use of chemical structures (diagrams)
Response a	11	5	6	23
Response b	27	20	64	69
Response c	44	68	27	7
Response d	12	6	2	0
Response e	6	1	0	0
Response a: I have not heard about [this skill]. Response b: I have heard about, but do not know how to use [this skill]. Response c: I know how to use [this skill]. Response d: I have expert knowledge on [this skill]. Response e: I have sufficient expert knowledge to teach [this skill].

Table X. Recommendations of a Deakin-University Working Party on computer skills training for undergraduates.

Each "unit" (ie topic or "subject") has a prescribed list of IT skills, which are deemed necessary for successful learning outcomes in that unit.

The required IT skills can vary from one degree stream to another (ie Arts versus Science majors). However, skills associated with "core" units, topics or subjects, will ensure that all students in a particular degree stream will have the appropriate IT skills for that particular discipline and degree stream.

Students must demonstrate that they have the required IT skills, or take flexible-learning training modules to acquire the required IT skills in the first few weeks of semester, before they are permitted to proceed in the unit, topic or subject.

A training module would take as little as 30 minutes to learn how to use email attachments, or up to a couple of hours to prepare a graph using a spreadsheet.

The training modules (or demonstration of requisite skills) are a pass/fail hurdle barrier for completion of the unit, topic or subject. They do not carry any credit points towards the degree program. Administratively, the modules are similar to teaching practicums or industrial placements, which are compulsory in some degree program, but which carry no credit points.

Table XI. Computer skills which require attention for chemistry undergraduates in 2001.

Using URLs.

Reading Adobe PDF files.

Downloading files from the WWW.

Using email attachments.

Using superscripts, subscripts, mathematical symbols, Greek letters, equations and diagrams in word processing documents.

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Abstract

CEJ Vol. 5, No. 2, Contents