Basic training…given my background, one might assume that I am referring to basic combat training; however, this time I speak of basic Windows training. A failure to master the rudimentary skills related to manipulation of the operating system can be a significant obstacle to someone who wishes to expand the scope of his or her computing skill set.
Eleven of my twelve students returned this week; the twelfth had let me know ahead of time that she would have to miss the second session to attend a funeral. Last week was all lecture, but this week was mostly hands on. I had requested that access to Notepad be restored and for the library’s techs to install Mozilla Firefox. After wowing my students with the tremendously useful Web Developer extension for Firefox, we moved on to Notepad.
To speed things along, I had prepared an HTML document with the DOCTYPE, namespace, and character encoding already filled in. It never occurred to me that navigating to a web page and saving the linked file to the desktop would eat up more than fifteen minutes as I stepped them through the process twice and then had to walk around individually assisting the stragglers. Needless to say, we got less than halfway through my lesson plan. It may be a couple of weeks before we even get to CSS.
…but that’s okay. I understood last week that no one would walk away from these eight weeks knowing how to build a professional-level web site, but hopefully I can provide them with a foundation with which they can then take a class in Dreamweaver or buy some instructional videos from Lynda.com.
If only I had the time to provide them with a similar foundation in the use of Windows. Over the past six years that I have been training novice computer users, I have noticed far too often a strictly task-oriented approach to acquiring computer skills. Many learn the “how,” but not the “why.” Any deviation from a set series of memorized (or written down) steps, and such a user becomes completely lost. Unfortunately, the complexity of the tasks that these individuals are expected to master is steadily increasing (along with the expectations of their superiors).
The ideal scenario would be for the tools and the systems that drive our digital world to become more intuitive, but in a featuritis-driven marketplace, that seems a fantasy. I guess we’ll just have to reevaluate how we conduct basic computer skills training.
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