The Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta has been a leader in addressing questions of arts students' employability. There has been widespread recognition recently that arts students are highly valued as employees. But there is also a public perception that arts students may not be well equipped to face the challenges of employment in the information age.

Therefore, the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta launched a project entitled “Providing a Technology Edge for Liberal Arts Graduates” with funding support from the Office of Learning Technologies, Human Resources and Development Canada. Along with our academic and commercial partners, we committed to investigate the popular perception that arts students "have fallen behind", or are languishing on the wrong side of a "digital divide" with respect to their computer skills, and as a consequence are at a disadvantage when it comes to employment success immediately after graduation.

The Technology Edge project will accomplish the following set of goals in its study of arts students’ information technology (IT) deficiencies:

• measure the differences in IT competencies between liberal arts and non-arts graduates
• solicit detailed descriptions of IT competencies from current arts employers
• develop learning materials and learning strategies which address students’ IT skill needs and pilot these materials in several arts courses.

The last two goals, as listed above, are currently in the process of completion and will be the subject of further documentation and research in this on-going project. This report summarizes the results of the first two goals listed.

Student surveys and employer focus groups were used to measure the differences in IT competencies between liberal arts and non-arts graduates, which were conducted from March to October 2002.  For the student surveys, arts and non-arts students graduating from a bachelor level program in 2002 were surveyed. To round out the reality of a student’s work experience, employers who hire arts students were respondents in the focus groups. This research was conducted at the University of Alberta, the University of British Columbia, and at the University of New Brunswick, giving us a strong national dimension to the coverage.

With respect to four core IT skills (basic computer use, e-mail, word processing, and Internet), this report presents the results that arts students are just as competent as non-arts students, and all students demonstrate a high degree of competence in these basic areas. As well, arts students have an overall positive attitude to using IT both in the work force and in academia, especially when these skills are in their own specialized area. This attitudinal study goes against the common myth that arts and technology do not mix.  However, arts students are less proficient, and less confident in their abilities, in areas such as presentation software, spreadsheet and database programs. These findings provide a solid basis upon which to develop instructional materials focussed upon specific areas of weakness.

On the other side of the job market equation, employers now uniformly expect a basic competency with computers. However, employers may articulate this requirement with an emphasis on the standard business suite of software, which includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and database skills. This obscures arts students’ areas of strengths, and accentuates areas that they are less adept in. Employers are also less confident about arts student’s computer skills, and expect less from them.

Both students and employers strongly prefer to see computer skills integrated into the academic curriculum. Our project now continues with the development of instructional material and learning strategies that are focused on arts students needs and geared to meet employers' expectations. These learning materials will be piloted and assessed in several academic courses in order to complete the project in 2003.