A computer fluency course was designed as a follow-up course to one often described as "Computer Literacy." Thus, students taking this course are expected to already know applications such as those found in the Microsoft Office suite, plus have a rudimentary knowledge of how to use the web. The course focuses on a hands-on-use of the technology in different complex, research and information-rich environments for students who are not computer and information science majors. We worked with colleagues from other disciplines who developed in-depth case studies in the areas of archaeology, chemistry and sociology. Among our observations to-date: Students enjoy using a variety of tools to solve different problems BUT there is a question of how to maintain coherence in the course across topics. Our solution (in part) has been to try and develop some common themes (threads) throughout the course such as examining different problems using a similar systems design approach.

Lecturers were given the flexibility and responsibility for designing the lab assignments that accompanied their lectures. This helped integrate the lectures and labs for the individual instructors BUT their lecture styles differed considerably so the composition and form of the labs varied as well. Our solution was to have the graduate assistant assume responsibility for running all the labs with the goal of making the work across the labs more consistent.

Having lecturers from different disciplines provides a successful, interdisciplinary flavor to the course BUT trying to determine how to provide "credit" to each person is very difficult. Our solution was made easier by the fact that a grant to fund the development of the course permitted us to pay the lecturers for some of their time.

This course provides schools a solution that goes beyond a typical Computer Literacy course for non-computer science majors BUT that raises the question of how to staff the course. This is especially critical since most computer and information science departments do not have sufficient resources to teach all the courses for their own students. Our solution was to not include programming and design the course so someone who was not a computer scientist, but who was knowledgeable about computing could teach it.

In general we feel that the course has met our most important objective: that of providing the students with sophisticated computing skills and the knowledge that it will be necessary for them to continually hone these skills. As each generation becomes more computing proficient the need for such a course will be obviated. But in the meantime this course provides a foundation to not only make students computer fluent, but to impress upon them the importance of staying abreast of technological developments.