INF1-CRISP: Informatics 1 - Critical Skills and Practice
Course Description
This course aims to introduce students to the Informatics community, University study and the diverse and contextual nature of practicing modern Informatics. It will prepare students for the rest of their degrees and provide them with the skills to be outstanding Informatics professionals by teaching critical thinking, an appreciation of the social and ethical implications of computing, and how to reflect on one’s own learning, as well as providing an opportunity to develop a range of transferable skills, such as writing, presenting and working with others.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this course, you should be able to:
- describe Informatics as a School, subject, and profession,
- practise key skills required for future courses, including effective communication in a range of formats, collaboration, and the use of tools like version control,
- reflect on your own learning and identify areas of improvement,
- design, plan and implement in a range of technical, practice-based situations, such as data analysis, AI models, or human-centred and accessible interfaces,
- demonstrate critical thinking, including in the social, ethical, and professional contexts of technology.
Skills you will develop
The following skills are crucial for attending University, and therefore this course will get you:
- Writing (blog posts and reflections)
- Communicating (presenting your work to others)
- Collaborating (working in pairs or in groups)
- Learning Independently (finding information that has not been provided)
- Managing your time (planning and coordinating around deadlines)
- Learning to Learn (understanding the basic value of learning activities and what they’re contributing to your development)
Assumptions
CriSP does not assume that its students have programming or maths knowledge.
Delivery Methods
The timetable for this course can be viewed on the University of Edinburgh timetable website.
Lectures
There are 2 taught lectures per week.
These occur at 14:10-15:00 on Monday and Tuesday in Appleton Tower Lecture Room 4.
(If there are any changes to room, you will be informed over email)
We have also scheduled some lectures throughout the semester on additional content:
- Making the Most of IT
- Version control using Git
- Living together as equals
- Using the Command Line Interface
- A guest panel of industry informaticians.
These lectures will be on a Thursday, 14:10-15:00 in Weeks 1, 7, 8, 9 and 10 of the academic timetable.
Tutorials
The Cohort Leads (academics allocated as contact points for student pastoral support) have been allocated as tutors for the course.
You will be in tutorials with other members of your academic family.
There will be 1 tutorial per week in Weeks 2 to 9 of the academic timetable.
Each tutorial will be 50 minutes long.
In tutorials, you will:
- Review some of what you’ve learnt
- Learn more about your project and assessments
- Meet others in your cohort lead and academic family
Labs
You will attend 1 lab session per week with demonstrators (weeks 3, 5, 7 and 9)
Your session will be at one of the following times per week, depending on your allocation:
- Tuesday 9:00-11:00
- Wednesday 15:10-17:10
- Thursday 9:00-11:00
- Friday 9:00-11:00
All labs take place in the 3rd floor of Appleton Tower
In labs, you will:
- Gain hands-on experience in key topics
- Experiment with different styles of learning (and Lego!)
- Learn with, and from, your peers
Assessment Structure
Reflective Learning
You will be assessed on your engagement with the learning outcomes listed ad the top of this page. This will be presented to be assessed in the form of a reflective portfolio:
- A reflection asks you to provide evidence of your engagement and respond to the provided critical reflection questions.
- Each reflection will be approximately 600 words
- You will submit 5 reflections, one for each learning outcome
- You will submit two reflections in week 7, three in week 11. The order in which the reflections are presented is up to you.
- (Optional) You may re-do one of your week 7 submissions.
- For all 5 learning outcomes, the total word count will be approximately 3000.
Weekly Blog
Each student is provided with a blog website. You can use this platform to:
- Record activities and topics you find interesting throughout the course
- Practice reflecting
These blogs are not assessed for quality but you will need to refer to them in your assessment.
A link to the instructions for accessing your blog will be added here.
How to Contact Us
The best way to stay up-to-date with what is happening in the course is to attend the lectures, tutorials and labs. We'll see you there and be able to answer any questions.
Otherwise you can direct questions to us via the CriSP EdStem. There is also a link to EdStem in the sidebar of this page.