The 6th International Conference on
Computer Science & Education (ICCSE 2011)
August 3-5, 2011. SuperStar Virgo, Singapore
How to Improving The non-computer science
students’ Computer Ability
WANG Zilan
Department of Traffic and Transportation
Southwest Jiaotong University, SWJTU
Emeishan Sichuan, China
wyi.336@163.com
LIN Jing
Department of Traffic and Transportation
Southwest Jiaotong University, SWJTU
Emeishan Sichuan, China
lingingcalmly@sina .com
Abstract—With the rapid development of the computer and
applied technology, universities increasingly focus on cultivating
non-computer science students’ computer application skills. This
paper analyzes the teaching status and problems of non-
computer major in universities, then explore the way to improve
the computer application skills of the non-computer science
students from the improvement of teaching resources, teaching
and learning methods, the mental attitude towards to the
computer education respectively. Propose appropriate measures
to improve students’ capacity of using computer to analyze and
solve practical problems and to cultivate the compound talents
with both computer skills and expertise.
Index Terms—ability of computer application, non-computer
major, Cultivation, computer teaching
I. INTRODUCTION
With the rapid development of the computer and applied
technology, computer technology has been widely applied to
all kinds of professions by using the computer to complete the
task of works skillfully is an essential job skills. The applied
skilled in computer has become the important part of a 21st –
century college students’ knowledge structure. To improve the
college students’ computer skills has been recognized into a
pressing issue by most of the universities. With the same time
in strengthening the cultivation of the computer professional
talents, furthermore, the cultivation of the non-computer
science students’ computer applied skills should be focus on. In
order to adapt to the new demands, many universities have
been reformed in teaching content, teaching methods. But
many problems still exist, especially on the computer education
of non-computer major. The computer educates for the college
non-computer science students not only should emphasize the
basic education of the computer, but further more its applied
education. So that the students’ analysis skills of actual
problems and the skills to solve practical problems by using
computer can be enhanced. Cultivate the compound talents
with both computer skills and expertise and improve the overall
978-1-4244-9718-8/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
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XIE Pan
Department of Traffic and Transportation
Southwest Jiaotong University, SWJTU
Emeishan Sichuan, China
zoe-me@163.com
quality of college students to meet the needs of social
development.
II. THE ANALYSIS ON COMPUTER EDUCATES OF NON-
COMPUTER MAJOR IN CURRENT SITUATION
Currently, the cultivation for computer science students in
universities has formed a relatively complete system, but for
the non-computer science students, the positioning in the
cultivation of computer applied capacity is still a vague
understanding, and there are some misconceptions. Except for
insufficient quantity and quality of teachers, inadequate
facilities, less practice teaching and not to be taken seriously,
but also there exists little curriculum, unreasonable, the falling
behind teaching methods and ability evaluation methods which
lead the students to be lack of positive initiative, etc. Mainly in
the following areas:
A. Lack of teaching resources and insufficient emphasis on
practical teaching
With the expansion of college enrollment, the number of
students’ increases, but teaching resources strains which is
mainly in the lack of teachers and insufficient equipment. As
for the problems of the quality of teachers, on the one hand,
public-course teachers have more and more task and teaching.
The communication between teachers and the non-computer
science students is very little. So the teachers can hardly know
the students’ characteristics and meet the students’ individual
requirements, more than to achieve the individualized educates.
On the other hand, the increasing demanding in quantity f
teachers will lead to the decrease of quality,
Now the practical abilities of students is generally reflected
poor. From the perspective of objective factors, it is because of
the lack of hardware devices which lead to the lack of practice
hours. But from the perspective of subjective factors, is due to
inadequate attention to experimental teaching. When most
universities build their own teaching team, they generally focus
most on the course teaching, but less on practical teaching, or
even ignored. The practice teaching can’t gain the enough
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emphasis. The teacher will be not so enthusiastic and poor
initiative. They just wait for the students to ask questions but
not be initiative to know the students’ problems.
B. Unreasonable curriculum
As generally the college has low positioning on the
cultivation of computer applied capacity for the non-computer
science students and focus on its own major’s basic and
specialized courses. But they ignore the set of the computer
course. The hours of the computer courses are continual
compressed so that the course can hardly satisfy the objective
requirements of the teaching content. The computer courses
have mainly stay in the basis of college student culture,
programming languages and some basic computer courses but
lack of a specific application software and programming. Many
foundation courses can only let students learn the basic
principles of computer and programming, but can’t help them
develop the practical ability with computer directly. Thus it
can’t let computer be a powerful tool for students to learn and
research. That is to say it can’t let the students use the computer
knowledge link to their own professional, so can’t give the
direct help to its own major.
C. Lack of awareness of computer knowledge
The basic education of the computer in universities will no
longer be “beginners”, with the information technology
carrying out in primary and secondary education nationally.
Most of the students have had the initial use of the computer
capacity when they enrolled. But their interest and
requirements are different from each other and their large
differences in basic level. However, most students are lack of
interest. During teaching the teachers often use the “teacher
oriented” approach teaching. Students are very passive and
think the importance of computer is less and less. The teaching
methods are out of date. Teaching materials and teaching
content are falling behind. The updating of teaching software
can’t keep up the pace of applied software’s updating.
In addition, teachers and students all lack of the concept of
sustainability, but consider the computer courses to be the
demand of course accomplishment. The students just learn the
course but no more further study or to apply. Teachers think
that their duties are solely in the classroom-education. When
the class is over, there is little contaction between teachers and
students. As there is no students’ application and teachers’
concerning, the position of computer educates in non-computer
major is lower and lower. Most of the teachers and students
lack of initiative and enthusiasm. The blind teachers teach the
students without goals.
D. Lack of features in evaluating and testing the computer
capacity of students
In universities, the evaluating on students’ learning skills
and level is directly guiding their learning direction. However,
the evaluating on the computer capacity of non-computer
science students is still passive and in low status. There is no
reasonable evaluating system to guide the students to improve
computer applied capacity by themselves. Most colleges even
just finish the evaluating by simply written test for basic
knowledge, or fully rely on the National Computer Rank
Examination. There is no such a evaluation system which has
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professional characteristic and can guide the students to know
the correct direction. The modes of practice operations or
curriculum design assigned for students are all the same with
outdated assessment methods. So the phenomenon of
plagiarism is very frequent cause most of them have the
attitude of coping with and just to complete the task.
III. THE STRATEGY FOR IMPROVE THE COMPUTER CAPACITY
OF NON-COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENTS
By this analysis, we will explore how to improve the non-
computer science students’ computer capacity through the
improvement of teaching resources, learning methods, and
mental attitude towards computer skills. Teachers and students
should work out together to improve the computer educates.
Teachers should take appropriate measures to improve student
interest in learning, promote student learning, while students
should take the initiative to learn and practice their knowledge
to their own area of expertise.
A. Increase investment in Equipment and Teacher team
Increase investment in hardware to meet the teaching and
practice needs, education software update constantly to meet
the requirement of application. At the same time, we need to
strengthen the construction of the basic computer education
teachers, to strengthen teaching and research, improve
teachers’ quality and knowledge reserve. We also need to
support teachers in computer education to go out and learn new
technologies as well as knowledge. To improve the level of
basic computer education teachers to meet the professional
need of computer knowledge, but also encourage other teachers
to learn initiatively and improve their own computer level. In
that way, they can set a good example to the non-computer
science students as well as assist teachers to develop students’
computer skills, with the dynamic change of the teaching
content, under the modern condition, identifying appropriate
teaching methods to improve the computer teaching
effectiveness, all the teachers not only the computer education
teacher should share the responsibility.
B. Design curriculum scientifically, Strengthen practical
teaching
With the computer technology’s penetration and
development in all object areas, various profession focus
differently. To training the non-computer science students’
computer skills, the computer curriculum design should have a
typical aim, the content shoot fit their major knowledge,
reasonable allocation in teaching and practice, strengthen
practical teaching.
Cultivating the computer power in non-computer science
students is aim at develop the ability of using computer-aided
tools for professional learning. Computer education course
should be able to help the following courses, to be fundamental
guiding pioneering. This need to regard training computer
skills of the non-computer science students as a systematic
project, focusing on improving their computer skill, we should
carefully analyze the status and logic relationship among the
basic computer knowledge, knowledge of hardware, software
and other programs, combine with the own characters of a
course to decide the course content, purpose and teaching
methods which can form a scientific and rational ability of

computer teaching curriculum system. Taking into account
their major needs, professional computer course should be
related to their major, like choose a characteristics of a
professional system or knowledge into professional course to
develop and strengthen the links between teaching content and
their own major application to increase their ability in major
study.
As a non-computer science student, the object of research is
not the computer itself but the application of computer
functions and no need to master the computer’s detailed
mechanism. Therefore, the practice courses should be essential
on the setup of the computer course. What’s more, the
assignment should be comprehensive, open and individualized
as much as possible. In the practice teaching, there should be
more experiments about design in order to improve the
students’ interests in practice and enhance their ability.
C. Developing students’ interests in computer
Developing the non-computer science students’ interests in
computer relies on not only the innovations of the teaching
method topics of computer education teachers but also the
guideness from teachers in other majors. Establishing a
“student centered” heuristic teaching methods is necessary
which can maintain the long-lasting interests and motivation of
students in study, inspire them totally, make full use of their
imagination and self-learning ability.
Considering the computer language learning, the non-
computer science students generally considered it’s difficult to
learn and master, even some of them close to give up. The
natural purpose of learning computer language is not for
program itself but to train the students to master the procedures
to solve practical design problem, set up good programming
habits, wide their idea, lay the basis for a kind of thought. In
order to motivate the student to use the computer knowledge to
solve practical problems, the other course teacher can
encourage their students to achieve their assignment designed
by computers. At the meantime, the teachers can prevent the
copying by individualize it with their own computer
knowledge, even set up the automatically and it systems. Such
kind of targeted training in computer awareness enables
students to experience the use of computers method to solve the
problem of their major, as well as exercise the comprehensive
ability in analyze and solve problem. Upon completion,
students feel a sense of achievements and understand the
practical value of computer knowledge, recognize the
programming is not beyond reach but useful everywhere. Thus,
we should motivate their initiative and enthusiasm in computer
skills learning.
D. Enhance communication, Establish sustainable training
model
In the past, college may encourage teachers to focus only
on communication with their counterparts and discuss teaching
methods. In process of cultivating computer capacity, we
should break the limitation, not only the computer education
teachers should develop students’ computer skills combined
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with their major as well as integrated into other related training
course, but also other teachers need to combine their subject’s
contents with computer applied technology to promote students
use computer to analyze and solve problem initially which also
extending its ability to develop application cycle, making the
computer teaching of sustainable development.
To meet the students’ needs of learn computer knowledge
in various majors should strengthened communication between
teachers across the curriculum, such as the holding teaching
seminar which both basic computer teaching teachers and other
major teachers all participate in. In order to strengthen the
communication between teachers, teachers and students, we
should make full advantages of the campus network to build a
self-learning platform so that teachers and students among
students an make tow-way, real-time interaction which make
them closer. We also can organize some discussions,
competitions and other activities to provide the students with
more learning opportunities.
E. Innovation of test and evaluation methods
Fully competency-based assessment test to cut over the past
final exam pattern, tocus more on practice ability, design
individual tasks on machine, along with related hardware and
software constantly updated, teachers should come up with test
system which can objectively and reasonably reflect the actual
student level of computer application and the system can test
their exercises and experimental. As well as prevent the
phenomenon of copying, encourage independent innovation
develop risk-taking and tenacity, protect curiosity, encourage
divergent guess.
IV. CONCLUSION
For the non-computer science students, learning computer
is aim at using this tool to serve for their own major. In order to
turn the students into a compound talents who are good at their
major as well as computer applications, the curriculum design
should fit the major, major course teachers should
communicate with the computer teachers, mobilize active
learning establish sustainable training model, improve their
ability to solve professional problem with computer
knowledge. Only a good job of computer teaching to non-
computer major, can product more qualified graduates for the
national “second five” plan, to adapt the needs of social
development.
REFERENCES
[1] CHEN Chuanming,XU Yong,BIAN Weixin, “Reform Proposal of
Computer Basis for Non-computer Major,” J.Computer Education. No.1
Jan.10,2011. 82-85.
[2] LIANG R an, “Strengthen the Fostering of Non-Com puter Major
College Students'Ability for Sustainable developm ent of com puter,”
J.Journal of Qiqihar Junior Teachers’College. No.6㧘2010.118-119.
[3] ZHANG Juxiao, “Improving Teaching Quality Strategies of Computer
Basic for Non-computer Majors in Higher Education,” J.Computer
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