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Motivations for starting IT courses

There are several main reasons why people were motivated to enrol onto IT courses.  Some of the reasons given have also been identified by research as motivations for learning in general, whilst others are specific to IT courses.  There are several main reasons:

Employment- The first reason related to jobs as people recognised the importance of having IT skills in many forms of employment.  Some wanted to gain IT skills to help them get a job, or to move into a better job, whilst others wanted to increase their skills for their current job.

“[we] wanted to do the computer literacy as well, ‘cos it’s summat that’s needed in just about every job now…”

Life in general-  Alongside this, people recognised that computers were becoming more prevalent in all aspects of life, and enrolled on IT courses to increase their skills so they could use computers in their homes and for other activities outside work.  Some felt that IT skills were skills that they ‘ought to have.’

“I think now the world’s just going computer crazy, you need to know how to use them, don’t you?”

Pace of technological change-  Some people also recognised the fact that technology develops very fast, and there is a need to keep refreshing and re-learning skills to ensure that you are not left behind.  So people enrolled onto IT courses to ensure that they kept their skills up to date as technology developed.

“[I aim] to carry on basically…like I said earlier, the computer line of it, everything changes from year to year so you’ve got to like, keep going.”

Interest-  Other people enrolled onto an IT course because they were interested in computers, wanted to learn more and be able to do more with them.

“…I want to get into computers, which I totally love.”

Children- People also recognised that it was important for their children or grandchildren to be able to use IT well.  Consequently, people were often motivated to go on an IT course by the fact that by doing this, they could help their children to increase their skills.

“…it’s educating my children, my kids, through computers, because nowadays at every high school, it’s computers…now I can relate back to my kiddies.”

Other reasons why people were motivated to go on courses were to learn to be able to communicate with friends and family using IT, and to help them with studying. 

These motivations, then, are the things that need to be tapped into to encourage people to get involved in IT courses.  However, whilst many people across our research had done IT courses, or were keen to do them, there was a minority who weren’t interested, and they had their own reasons not to do an IT course.