User Support and Training
Continuous Learning on IT for HKUST Staff
In view of the rapid advances in IT and its growing impact on our productivity, it is important for staff members to keep themselves up-to-date on how IT can benefit their work.
Understanding the need, ITSC is organizing IT training activities for staff members on general IT as well as focused topics, in the hope to address the needs of colleagues in different roles.
For Administrative Staff…
A survey was conducted in March 2018 to solicit IT training needs and interests from colleagues in administrative roles. Based on the responses (n=123), the top five training needs include: Advanced Working with Spreadsheet, Advanced Word Processing, Advanced Presentation Preparation, Email Management with MS Outlook and Working with Survey Tools.
In response to the survey findings, the following courses were held in August:
- Advanced Working with Spreadsheet (MS Excel 2016): Data Management
- Advanced Working with Spreadsheet (MS Excel 2016): Data Analysis and Reporting
- Advanced Working with Spreadsheet (MS Excel 2016): Skills Enhancement
- Advanced Working with Spreadsheet (MS Excel 2016): Formula and Functions
- Introduction to Qualtrics
The Advanced Working with Spreadsheet courses will be repeated in October to cope with the overwhelming responses we received. Please watch out for announcements and check out our IT training for administrative staff website.
ITSC has been lining up professional trainers to deliver IT training on departmental level. These departmental training activities have been very well received and considered very helpful in enhancing productivity with IT. Past examples include Microsoft Office tools for Library, Academic Registry and Finance Office; Microsoft Outlook calendar for Facilities Management Office, etc. If your office or department has a particular IT training need, please send email to cchelp@ust.hk and let us know.
For Researchers…
We are seeing increasing uses of computation for academic research. The advances in GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) have driven more applications in AI and traditional scientific computation. ITSC has been working with Research Office to support HKUST researchers in using GPU for their work. In particular, a series of workshops were organized in July to help researchers to gain hands-on experience in leveraging GPU-accelerated software for their research.
The workshops were conducted by Dr Jeffery Adle, Solutions Architect of NVIDIA and his colleagues, and included the following topics:
- Introduction to GPU Computing
- GPU Programming with OpenACC Directives
- Introductory and Advanced Programming in CUDA C
- Using GPU for Deep Learning
Demand of the above was confirmed as we enrolled more than 50 participants to these workshops. We regret that the learning platform of NVIDIA experienced some problems but the overall feedbacks from the participants are very positive. We will arrange similar training activities in the future to meet the demand of our research community.
For IT Staff…
Colleagues working in the field of IT have been used to acquiring new IT skills on a continual basis throughout their careers. The IT colleagues posted in different units of the University are no exception. In many cases, they serve as the "change agents" of their units in leveraging new IT for better outcomes. To encourage and facilitate IT colleagues of the University to enrich and share IT knowledge regularly, the IT Enrichment Program is introduced in April 2018. A kick-off gathering was held in April with the presence of Prof Roger Cheng, Associate Provost (Teaching & Learning), who also gave a speech on the particular importance of continual enrichment for IT colleagues to the University.
The IT Enrichment Program is intended for IT staff at all levels, including managers, system administrators, application developers, etc. with a focus on updates in specific areas of IT including leading edge developments.
A series of training, from foundation to advanced level, will be offered in the coming few years. Areas will cover:
- Technical IT training in system support and application development
- Administrative and soft skills
- Cybersecurity knowledge
- Hot HKUST research topics in IT areas
For details, please refer to webpage on IT Enrichment Program.
Forthcoming …
More training workshops and courses will be arranged and announced in due time. Based on the feedbacks from colleagues, those who are unable to attend training classes would like to have the materials accessible online, so they could learn at their own time and pace. We are working on it.