Information will be the coin of the realm in the 21st century, and learning to locate, evaluate, utilize, and disseminate it will be at the very center of the University's mandate. In the past, only some science and engineering students needed extensive high level computing skills. However now, and increasingly in the future, fluency with computational environments will be a decisive factor in both academic and commercial success. As a sequel to our highly successful first course for non-computer majors, whose development was sponsored jointly by NSF and the Department of Education, we propose to develop a second course which focuses on the acquisition and presentation of data and information. For data acquisition, the course gives the students high level mastery of the internet. For the presentation of information students will master a multimedia authoring system. The Internet segment of the course focusses on the following topics: . What is the Internet and what is it not . Resources available on the Internet for teaching and research in various fields. Where to locate additional information. . Navigating the Internet via Gopher, Archie, Veronica . WAIS and WWW. . email, FTP, Telnet and List servers . Using USENET, setting up news groups and IRC on an Internet node set up and maintained at the College. The multimedia segment of the course uses the Toolbook environment from Asymetrix Corp. and focusses on: . how to construct simple "books" with hot keys and buttons . how to create multi-page branching books . how to create motion and animation . how to design and create hypertext systems . how to design and create interactive multi-media . how to program sophisticated multimedia applications within Toolbook.
