Course co-ordinator, Gerry Kingston said that he expects up to 15 students- last year’s HND computing graduates- to enrol on the new degree course, but added that any other students with HND or equivalent qualifications were welcome to apply.

    The degree course, entitled ‘BSc Hons Computing and Information Systems’, will take three years of part-time study, based both at Fermanagh College and the Intec Centre, from where students will be able to take part in video conferences run by the University Of Ulster’s Faculty Of Informatics in Jordanstown.

    Gerry said that the provision of the degree course was primarily because the demand was there for it within Fermanagh, particularly amongst adults and mature students who could not travel to Jordanstown for two or three nights a week to complete the course up there.

    “It’s certainly very attractive for people who have commitments in Fermanagh- it saves them a lot of expense and saves them from having to move to Belfast,” said Gerry.

    Although they will be based in Fermanagh, students on the course will have full access to the facilities of both the College here and the University Of Ulster campus in Jordanstown. The lecturers in Fermanagh will have University Of Ulster teaching status.

    The idea of having a degree course based in Fermanagh was initially conceived a couple of years ago, but the whole process needed two or three years to get it together, said Gerry. The University staff had to set up a new course, something which takes quite a while, and they were always very helpful, he added. In setting up a degree course run from their own campus, Fermanagh College are leading the way in front of the other regional colleges around the Province, who will most likely soon follow suit.

    With the support of the Council, who regard the provision of a degree course in computing in the county as part of their Development Plan for the area, the College’s submission to the University was accepted, and the first students to hopefully emerge with a computing degree from Fermanagh will begin their three year course this month.

    There are not yet droves of students flocking to Fermanagh from elsewhere in the Province, but the provision of the course should eventually attract a number of people from outside the county, reversing the usual trend which dictates that local people travel to Belfast or further afield for their further education.

    One of the first to enrol for the new degree course was Mrs Sylvia Paul, who completed her part-time HND course earlier this year. An RNLI crew member in Enniskillen, as part of her computing studies Sylvia produced a CD-Rom package of the RNLI training manual. Such was the quality of her work, that the RNLI are currently mass producing her CD-Rom, with a view to distributing it to lifeboat stations around the UK.

    Use of the CD-Rom, instead of the traditional written training manual, was found to reduce the time required for basic training from two weeks to one week. The package is interactive, containing a number of different sections with a question bank after each section. There are also assessment tests at the end of each stage, and results are all recorded.