IT IN THE ARTS FACULTY - REVIEWING THE FIRST CYCLE Sharon Flynn Department of Information Technology National University of Ireland, Galway Galway, Ireland Sharon.Flynn@nuigalway.ie www.it.nuigalway.ie/~s_flynn ABSTRACT In 1999 we reported on a new departure for the department of IT in the National University of Ireland, Galway, in the teaching of Information Technology as a full subject in the Arts Faculty. At that time we described the motivation behind the decision to provide a humanities-based IT course, and the challenges which faced us. Now that we have completed our first cycle and are about to graduate a second set of students, we reflect on the course and how it has evolved, we report on how we have addressed our challenges, and finally we consider the destinations of the BA (IT) graduates, current and future. Keywords Course Design: IT education: IT in Humanities. 1. INTRODUCTION The Department of Information Technology in NUI, Galway is currently a cross-faculty body which teaches academic programmes in Information Technology (IT). At postgraduate level there are three taught programmes: the Masters in Information Technology (MIT) accepts students from a wide variety of backgrounds and provides them with core technical skills and business and behavioural courses to produce flexible, hybrid IT graduates; the Higher Diploma in Software Design and Development accepts students with a numerate background and provides them with core software engineering skills; the MSc in Software Design and Development is similar to the Higher Diploma but with an additional research element. At undergraduate level, there are two main programmes. The four year B.Sc. (IT) produces graduates with a wide range of computational skills within an applied context. IT is also offered as a full subject in the Arts Faculty, as part of a traditional three-year degree in the humanities. An undergraduate BA student in NUI, Galway takes four subjects in their first year, and two subjects in each of their second and third years. It was decided in 1995 that IT should be added to the existing 25 subjects on offer to students. This new departure for the teaching of IT was previously reported [1] [2], where we described the new challenges in providing material that complements existing Arts subjects and in adapting our course content and pedagogy to the style and ethos of the Arts Faculty. The first set of students to take IT as part of their BA degree graduated in Summer 2000, and the second set of students are about to sit their final exams. This paper reflects on the first cycle of IT in the Humanities and how the course has evolved, it reports on how we have addressed the challenges described in [1], [2] and the new challenges facing us, and finally it reports on the destinations of the BA (IT) graduates, current and future. 2. COURSE STRUCTURE AND CONTENT The course modules for IT in the BA were designed to reflect the difference in ethos between the BA and the B.Sc. in IT, where software development comprises a core part. We had to take into account the different background of the students, for example mathematics is not a requirement for entry to the BA programme. Further, the contact hours in an Arts degree are considerably less than in a Science or Engineering-type degree, to facilitate reflection and enabling students to do further research on the subject. Three key objectives were identified which form the core of the IT programme in the BA. These are: • Problem Solving and Programming • Information Management • Objective Appreciation of IT While the first two will form a part of any Computing degree, and it was considered essential that they be adequately covered in the BA programme, the third objective is one which is often neglected in a technical programme. However, an objective Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission. 2nd Annual LTSN-ICS Conference, London © 2001 LTSN Centre for Information and Computer Science