NOVA COLLEGE-WIDE COURSE CONTENT SUMMARY
AST 236 – SPECIALIZED SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS (3 CR.)
Revised 5/2010
Course Description
Teaches specialized integrated software applications on the microcomputer. Emphasizes document production
to meet business and industry standards. Lecture 3 hours per week.
General Course Purpose
This is a course designed to help the student understand the expanding area of records management due to
the advancement in information technology with emphasis upon the principles and practices of effective
records management using alphabetic, subject, numeric, and geographic storage and retrieval methods for
manual and electronic database systems.
Course Prerequisites/Co-requisites
AST 101 or equivalent and student must be able to read and write at a college level.
Course Objectives
Upon completing the course, the student should be able to:
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Describe the typical components of a microcomputer.
Identify and discuss the functions of computer hardware: input, processing output, and storage.
Identify important categories of microcomputer software (word processing, spreadsheet, database
management, presentation graphics, XHTML) and explain what they do and how they work in
general terms
Use the operating system to perform disk management operations such as formatting and copying
Use the operating system to perform file management operations such as copying, moving,
renaming, deleting and subdirectory organization
Identify and discuss the basic activities involved in word processing
Use a word processing program to: create a document; input and edit text, format, save, retrieve,
and print a document.
Identify and discuss the basic activities involved in working with a spreadsheet
Use a spreadsheet program to: create, edit, manipulate, format, execute, save. Retrieve, and print
a worksheet.
Identify and discuss the basic activities involved in working with a database
Use a database management program to: create the structure and contents of a database; modify
and sequence the database; perform queries; create and run reports.
Identify and discuss the basic activities involved in working with presentation software
Use presentation software to: create a slide show; input text and graphics on slides, edit, save,
retrieve, print, and view a slide show.
Identify and discuss the basic activities involved in using the Internet to access resources,
searching using key words, and evaluate resources.
Create a Web site with XHTML tags and post to a Web server
Major Topics to be Included
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Microcomputer Components
Using operating system commands
Basic word processing concepts and applications
Basic spreadsheet concepts and applications
Basic database concepts and applications
Basic presentation concepts and applications
XHTML
Basic Internet concepts and applications