Purpose of Tech Academy
The goal of Tech Academy is to introduce students to provide foundational knowledge of essential technology used in PSU courses, along with an awareness of the free technology resources available to students. To do this the Tech Academy Working Group has designed interactive modules to help students learn about, and engage with, the technologies they will need to be successful in the classroom. Critical to Tech Academy’s success are those assignments and tasks were students must interact with the technologies and complete a task.
Since the content covers technologies at the basic level, Tech Academy is well suited for first-year students, but it can be beneficial for any incoming students who need an orientation to PSU’s technology offerings, like transfer, international, and other groups.
Content of Tech Academy
Tech Academy is broken into 7 parts, which group technologies by theme. It typically is assigned as an asynchronous task to be completed outside the classroom, taking students less than 2 hours to complete.
- Part 1: Canvas Introduction
- Canvas notifications, personalization, and viewing grades/faculty comments. Introduction to the Top Hat application.
- Part 2: PSU Tech Basics
- Wi-Fi, PSU Alerts, PSU GO APP, AI recommendations and Microsoft Co-Pilot, Data Privacy at PSU
- Part 3: Document Creation, Storage, and Printing
- Microsoft 365 (Microsoft Word and Outlook), Google Workspace and Printing at PSU
- Part 4: University Libraries Basic
- Ask-a-librarian, Open and Affordable Textbooks, and Equipment to Borrow
- Part 5: Web Creation
- Sites at PSU (WordPress)
- Part 6: Digital Storytelling and Maker Projects
- Media Commons, One Button Studio, Adobe Creative Cloud and Acrobat Pro, and Copyright/plagiarism
- Part 7: Communication on Campus
- Social media, Zoom basics, and Outlook for Email
Each part is designed so that students learn by engaging with the technologies, and include assignments where students must complete a task utilizing a featured technology and/or the assignment function of Canvas. These assignments are typically graded by a course instructor, or another facilitator like a campus librarian or peer mentor.