Information Technology Certificate

IT competency

All BSc students are provided with a basic level of competency in the use of current IT tools. Finding, retrieving, preparing electronic documents and communicating electronically become second-nature to all science students. In many programs students work frequently with symbolic calculation packages such as Mathematica and MAPLE, statistical packages such as S-Plus, and numerical packages. Others develop proficiency in a scientific type-setting environment such as LaTeX or produce web documents in HTML format. Databases, CAD, GIS, and spreadsheets; a variety of hardware and operating systems experience further round out the set of skills of many science graduates.

Certificate in Information Technology

The Faculty of Science Certificate in IT provides a discipline-based program to students who entered first or second year science in September 2000 or later, majoring in Earth Sciences, Mathematics, Physics and Atmospheric Science or Statistics. Certificate in IT will be awarded if you complete:

1. The 20-credit Major or Honours Program in one of the following: Earth Sciences, Mathematics, Physics and Atmospheric Science, Statistics;
2. The classes identified by the Major department which cover the following categories of IT.

Presentations

• Proficiency in developing on-line presentations, including object linking
• Ability to produce documents in HTML and/or XML format
• Creation of a personal web site

Data collection

• Construct a relational database using multiple tables and data entry forms for textual, numeric, and graphical data
• Do the above with a spreadsheet
• Collect and process multivariate data sets, e.g. spatial coordinate data using GIS, and incorporate it into a database, CAD or GIS

Data manipulation

• Editing, transformation, import-export to different data formats within and between spreadsheets, databases, and support programs

Data processing

• Basic manipulation of multivariate data and analysis, for example, GIS manipulation of spacial data sets
• Statistical evaluation of data sets using spreadsheet functions, stats programs ex. SYSTAT, S-Plus
• Numeric modeling using spreadsheets, GIS etc.

Data visualization

• Graphing in 2D and 3D, time series etc.
• Surface modeling
• Fundamentals of animation

General issues

• Intellectual property in the digital world
• Ethics and privacy
• Security (viruses, firewalls, data encryption)

The IT skills will be covered within the regular discipline-based classes of the Major. They are presently available for students registered in the Major or Honours programs of Earth Sciences, Mathematics, Physics and Atmospheric Science or Statistics. Consult each department's web page for a listing of the appropriate classes which will meet the requirement of the IT Certificate.