Information Technology 3301-L2TI
Course description applicable from the academic year 2023/24 on:
An entry-level course meant to familiarize students with the basics of information technology. A range of productivity software will be showcased, including tools that students might find useful in their academic exploits. Relevant topics that border on computer science will be discussed, including – but not limited to – online security, cloud computing, operating systems, or artificial intelligence. The primary aim of the tutorials and interactive exercises featured throughout the course is to equip the student with the knowledge, skillset, and confidence to increase their computer literacy and help them function in a society that relies heavily on computer-based technologies.
Detailed topic will include the following (subject to updates, as technologies develop):
• A brief historical outline of computer science
• Basic terminology
• Browsing security and effectiveness (cache clearing, privacy settings)
• System optimalization (background process management, star-up settings)
• Word processors (Microsoft Word, Google Docs)
• Document creation (MS Word/Google Docs)
• Editing software (DTP) (LaTeX, TeXworks, MikTeX)
• Website front end formatting using basic HTML tags
• Using regular expressions for the purpose of information retrieval in annotated and unannotated text databases (Poliqarp NKJP, notepad ++)
• Basic functions and applications in spreadsheet software (Microsoft Excel / Google Sheets)
• Presentation software (np. Microsoft PowerPoint lub Google Slides)
• The do’s and don’ts of E-mail correspondence
• The social and philosophical implications of Strong (Hard) and Weak (Soft) AI
• AI in everyday life (virtual assistants and targeted recommendations)
• Ethical workload optimization using Chatbots based on Large Language Models
Course description below applicable up to the academic year 2022/23:
Covered subject components:
1. COME learning platform features used in the course.
2. Basic operating system information presenting their diversity and the most commonly used features of the Windows system.
3. Basics of text document editing with the use of the Writer application.
4. Advanced features of Writer required for complex text formatting.
5. The use of web browsers.
6. Email: inner mechanics and the configuration of mail clients.
7. Basics of spreadsheet creation with the use of the Calc application.
8. Advanced features of Calc required for more efficient management of numeric data.
9. Basics of HTML and web page structuring.
10. The use of CSS stylesheets in enriching the visual aspect of web pages.
11. Digital resources of Warsaw University.
12. Basics of creating digital presentations with the use of the Impress application.
13. The use of Writer in preparing academic papers.
Type of course
Mode
Prerequisites (description)
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Learning outcomes applicable from the academic year 2023/24 on:
Knowledge
The students will know and comprehend:
• Basic IT-related terminology (K_W01, K_W02, K_U05)
• The role of Computer Science relative to other fields (K_W01, K_W02, K_U05)
• The possibilities and limitations of the technologies emergent from the latest trends in computer science, including artificial intelligence software based on large language models (K_W01, K_W02, K_U05)
Skills
The students will be capable of:
• Using selected software, including – but not limited to – word processors and spreadsheet software, to complement their academic work (K_U07, K_U08)
• Use and modify regular expressions for the purpose of information retrieval (K_U07, K_U08)
• Modify the fron-end appareance of websites by modifying the tagset of their HTML source (K_U07, K_U08, K_U09)
• Manage data and files of varios formats (K_U07, K_U08)
• Optimize and secure their browsing experience on the internet (K_U07, K_U08)
• Recognize selected security and privacy issues (K_U07, K_U08)
• Recognize a subset of problems that lower system performance and take remedial action where possible (K_U07, K_U08)
• Create and modify prompts in real time to optimize work with an AI agent (K_U07, K_U08)
Social skills
The students are ready to:
• Convey and relay information via e-mail in a manner that is effective and observes established conventions (K_U09)
• Adhere to requisite ethical standards when using AI agents to optimize their workload (K_U09)
• Comprehend – and convey – relevant content embedded in electronic media such as text, spreadsheets, databases, and presentations (K_U07, K_U09)
• Function in a heavily computerized society as computer-literate citizens (K_U07, K_U08, K_U09)
Language skills:
B2+ language training (K_U09).
Learning outcomes below applicable up to the academic year 2022/23:
The student acquires all skills necessary for utilising the computer and information technology in the scope of academic activities as well as taking advantage of the digital resources offered by the university.
Assessment criteria
Assessment methods and criteria applicable from the academic year 2023/24 on:
Progress on the designated online platform (Moodle) as measured by the range and degree of completed interactive activities provided therein. In order to receive a passing grade in this course, the prospective student must receive a passing score (i.e. receive no less than 60%) on no less than 60% of all available course activities (quizzes, exercises, lessons, etc.).
Assessment methods and criteria below applicable up to the academic year 2022/23:
Rezultatem kursu jest ocena końcowa, która jest bazowana na sumie punktów uzyskanych przez studenta w testach
Bibliography
Bibliography applicable from the academic year 2023/24 on:
• Bott, E., & Stinson, C. (2020). Windows 10 inside out. Microsoft Press.
• Flowers, J. C. (2019, March). Strong and Weak AI: Deweyan Considerations. In AAAI spring symposium: Towards conscious AI systems (Vol. 2287, No. 7).
• Friedl, J. E. (2006). Mastering regular expressions. " O'Reilly Media, Inc.".
• Hawkridge, D. (2022). New information technology in education. Taylor & Francis.
• Kasneci, E., Seßler, K., Küchemann, S., Bannert, M., Dementieva, D., Fischer, F., ... & Kasneci, G. (2023). ChatGPT for good? On opportunities and challenges of large language models for education. Learning and individual differences, 103, 102274.
• McEnery, T. (2019). Corpus linguistics. Edinburgh University Press.
• Ose, S. O. (2016). Using Excel and Word to structure qualitative data. Journal of Applied Social Science, 10(2), 147-162.
• Pignalberi, G., & Dominici, M. (2019). Introduction to LATEX and to some of its tools. ArsTEXnica, 28, 8-46.
• Przepiórkowski, A., Bańko, M., Górski, R. L., Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B., Łaziński, M., & Pęzik, P. (2012). Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego. PWN, Warszawa.
• Shmueli, G., Patel, N. R., & Bruce, P. C. (2011). Data mining for business intelligence: Concepts, techniques, and applications in Microsoft Office Excel with XLMiner. John Wiley and Sons.
• Vaswani, A., Shazeer, N., Parmar, N., Uszkoreit, J., Jones, L., Gomez, A. N., ... & Polosukhin, I. (2017). Attention is all you need. Advances in neural information processing systems, 30.
• White, J., Fu, Q., Hays, S., Sandborn, M., Olea, C., Gilbert, H., ... & Schmidt, D. C. (2023). A prompt pattern catalog to enhance prompt engineering with chatgpt. arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.11382.
• Wilson, K., & Wilson, K. (2014). Microsoft office 365. Using Office 365: With Windows 8, 1-14.
• Zaiontz, C. (2019). Real Statistics Resource Pack software (Release 6.8). Copyright (2013–2020).
• Zamfirescu-Pereira, J. D., Wong, R. Y., Hartmann, B., & Yang, Q. (2023, April). Why Johnny can’t prompt: how non-AI experts try (and fail) to design LLM prompts. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-21).
Bibliography below applicable up to the academic year 2022/23:
The Warsaw University Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics textbook created for use in the university's IT courses.
Using the Computer and Managing Files handbook, created by the ITdesk.info project of computer e-education with open access: www.ITdesk.info
LibreOffice user guides created by the open-source office suite LibreOffice developers:
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: