I don't understand why this is happening! Why on earth would basic computer skill training get worse over time, when use of computers has gone from novel to ubiquitous in the course of just my adult life?
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Precisely because it has become so ubiquitous, no one thinks to teach it anymore? Compulsory Office courses for undergrads died out c.2005? Therefore pretty high proportion of current school teachers themselves probably never taught how to use Word or Excel properly (i.e. paragraph styles, formulae)
Listening to student feedback! "It's boring" "not what we signed up for!". A few years ago I had feedback on 2nd year history assignment that involved building an online map to the effect of "I didn't sign up for a History degree to do complicated computer stuff"
Yup. The idea that anything can be changed from the defaults and that further functions may be hiding in menus is just not a thing (neither is "I'm going to spend some time playing with this"). Btw, this also extends to navigating websites and, closer to teaching, an LMS.
You're right about use of an LMS. My students get confused when I tell them modules are organized by date and that they simply need to scroll down to find things. "Clicking around" to get acclimated is something they just don't seem to do.
This is the first semester I've hit that in quantity, and I'm struggling to even understand the problem. You're right, this is not how generational shifts are supposed to work.
I wonder to what extent this is about how all education software (or writing software, or whatever) is produced and selected by schools. Back in the day, there were only so many choices and we were all more or less on the same page.
Now, I get the sense schools get subscriptions to various packages of stuff, or rely on freeware, with the result that there isn't a lot of consistency in what students come up using and no shared set of basic skills. In short, capitalism and the tech bros may be to blame yet again.
To a certain extent, yes. But sit down and play around is a universal skill (as is googling your problem). That said, more and more journal guidelines these days explain how to insert page numbers and advise you to make friends with the "insert footnote" function, so it's not just students.
I think it's just slow buildup of phone and tablet use. No file system, no need for file organization with a search feature, no need to understand file types, etc.
A class thought I was taking the piss when I told them to save as a doc. I don't mean doc as an abbreviation of document, but the extension for a Microsoft word file.
I had a student a few years ago turn in a paper with "web citations" to c://, so file structure understanding appears to be long gone.
I have students right now complaining that I gave them a pre-formatted workbook to fill out in Word, because it means they have to use Word.
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I have students right now complaining that I gave them a pre-formatted workbook to fill out in Word, because it means they have to use Word.