The University’s Skills team offer staff, students, and partner students support, advice, and training on the areas outlined below.
Drop-in sessions will be advertised throughout the year via student emails. However you can always meet IT skills 1-1 or as a group, online or In-person. See details below on ways to book.
Contact details #
To book on to a session, use the button below or email ITskills@chi.ac.uk or call us on 01243 816454
Meet the team #
Dan is the University IT trainer, with extensive experience supporting staff and students of all abilities. Before joining the university in 2016, he ran an independent IT support service alongside his own photography business. His areas of expertise include Microsoft Office 365 applications, assistive technologies, and classroom technology.
Beyond his core training role, Dan enjoys exploring creative software particularly within the fields of photography, video editing and any other digital media production. He is also enjoying experimenting with the latest generative AI technologies to discover innovative and imaginative ways to create digital content from existing artworks or completely from scratch
What we support #
Word Processing
We support: Microsoft Word
Software features: Microsoft Word and Word online are available for all students at the University as part of our Microsoft 365 licence.
Microsoft Word offers inbuilt text to speech functionality and dictation from microphone or audio file.
Presentation software
We support: Microsoft PowerPoint
Software features: a software package designed to create electronic presentations consisting of a series of separate pages or slides.
Spreadsheet and data manipulation
We support: Microsoft Excel
Software features: Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program included in the Microsoft Office suite of applications. Spreadsheets present tables of values arranged in rows and columns that can be manipulated mathematically using both basic and complex arithmetic operations and functions.
Note Taking/Assignment planning
We support: Microsoft OneNote, Microsoft Planner
Software features: Microsoft OneNote is a computer program for free-form information gathering and multi-user collaboration. It gathers users’ notes (handwritten or typed), drawings, screen clippings and audio commentaries. Notes can be shared with other OneNote users over the Internet or a network.
Email and Calendar
We support: Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft 365 portal
Software features: Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office suite. Although often used mainly as an email application, it also includes a calendar, task manager, contact manager, note taking, journal, and web browsing.
Cloud Storage/File Storage
We support: OneDrive
Software features: a file hosting service that allows users to sync files and later access them from a web browser or mobile device.
Communication Platforms
We support: Microsoft Teams
Software features: Skype for Business, formerly known as Microsoft Lync, is a unified communications (UC) platform that integrates common channels of business communication including instant messaging (IM), VoIP (voice over IP), file transfer, web conferencing, voicemail and email.
Internet Browsers
We support: Microsoft Edge / Google Chrome / Safari
Software features: a computer program with a graphical user interface for displaying HTML files, used to navigate the Web
Assistive technology #
Screen magnifier and screen reader
We support: Read & Write: Texthelp
Software features: ReadWrite is a screen reader, as well as providing vocabulary and research tools.
File converter, file simplifier and alternate media solution
We support: SensusAccess
Software features: SensusAccess is a self-service, alternate media solution for educational institutions. SensusAccess allows anyone to automatically convert documents into a range of alternate media including audio books (MP3 and DAISY), e-books (EPUB, EPUB3 and Mobi) and digital Braille. The service can also be used to convert inaccessible documents such as image-only PDF files, JPG pictures and Microsoft PowerPoint presentations into more accessible and less tricky formats. We call that Inclusion Technology.