The development of Cultural Studies as an interdisciplinary domain that is centrally concerned with the development and nature of literacy - or literacies - in today's multimedia world has impacted significantly on traditional English teaching at schools and universities.

Cultural Studies reflects the literacy needs of today's workers in a number of ways:

• Providing access to a range of different texts - not only books, but also films, videos, multimedia
• Giving students a critical language with which to discuss the nature of those forms of texts, as well as the ideas and issues they raise
• Enabling students to situate the texts they are studying in relation to the contemporary social and cultural environment
• Enabling students to understand that a range of different perspectives on these texts is possible, even inevitable, and to have some way of understanding those different responses

For teachers and other professionals trained in more traditional forms of literacy, this has created demands that they:

• Reconfigure their literacy training to include text-forms (such as film, web site) not included in that training
• Develop a critical language that enables them to work across text-forms, rather than one developed specifically for a particular medium
• Develop ways of discussing social and cultural events and practices, which can be related to the cultural (textual) production of the time
• Develop ways of talking about different readings, rather than one mainstream reading, and the significance of that multiple reading practice for teaching

The Department of Critical and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University has drawn on the expertise of staff, who are trained in both traditional English and in Cultural Studies, to develop a curriculum in multimedia literacy. The aim of the Department is to generate what it calls 'critical cultural literacy' - the literacy necessary for all knowledge-workers in the multimedia environment of the 21st century.

Subjects from this program have been re-worked for on-line presentation as a Graduate Certificate and Graduate Diploma in Cultural Studies.

As an on-line program the learner is able to work at her or his own rate, and to tailor the program to specific time-constraints. Each of these subjects informs the learner - and the teacher - in the literacy needs outlined above. Each subject also examines issues central to social and cultural life in the early 21st century, and provides students with new and exciting ways of re-thinking these issues and relating them to their work and their lives. On-line communication will also provide learners with ways of debating issues and ideas and forming on-line learning communities.

The Graduate Certificate and Graduate Diploma in Cultural Studies are relevant to people in arrange of professions and activities, including:

• Teachers
• Policy-makers in the arts and social sciences
• Arts professionals
• Communication and writing specialists
• Social and cultural researchers.

The programs are particularly responsive to the needs of teachers involved in the Secondary English curriculum, providing special exercises that engage with the texts on the Secondary English syllabus.

For those of you looking for new and exciting ways of developing your knowledge and skills in contemporary literacies, the Graduate Certificate and Graduate Diploma in Cultural Studies offered by the Department of Critical and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University provide an accessible, supportive learning experience.