Early Requisite Technology Skills

All students are required to have certain technology competencies before beginning graduate work at the Graduate School of Education and to further develop skills throughout the course of your program.

Instructors will assume that you have met the prerequisites AND develop these skills during your first semester of study

  • Familiarity with UB Techtools
  • Ability to utilize features of the UBLearns course room
  • Familiarity with UB Library resources and procedures
  • Ability to access online library journals and course reserve materials
  • Ability to evaluate the quality and authenticity of web resources
  • Ability to use a bibliographic database, such as EndNote
  • Ability to use audio and video via the web
  • Familiarity with a presentation program
  • Familiarity with a database program, such as MS Access
  • Familiarity with UB IT Policies and GSE Procedures
  • Have and use a UB email account
  • Growing familiarity and use of emerging technologies, such as wikis, blogs, instant messaging, and RSS feeds

In addition to skills developed during class, students may take courses at a community continuing education program, a computing-training center, or community college. These skills can also be self taught with the help of a textbook (such as the Visual Quickstart series) or the instruction manual for the specific software.

Because numerous courses in the program require additional technical competencies, students may wish to augment their basic proficiencies after entering their program by taking advantage of a variety of workshops on campus. Workshops are offered through the UB Information Technologies (IT) department and the UB libraries.

Here are some example sources of instruction: