Ask Slashdot: How To Ask College To Change Intro To Computing? 337
First time accepted submitter taz346 writes "I got a Bachelor's degree 30 years ago, but I recently started back to college to get an Associate's degree. Most of the core courses are already covered by my B.A. but one that I didn't take way back when was Introduction to Computing. I am taking that now but have been very disappointed to find that it is really just Introduction to Microsoft Office 2010. That's actually the name of the (very expensive) textbook. It is mindless, boring and pretty useless for someone who's used PCs for about 20 years. But beyond that, why does it have to be all about MS Office and nothing else? Couldn't they just teach people to create documents, etc., and let them use any office software, like Libre Office? It seems to me that would be more useful; students would learn how to actually create things on their computers, not just follow step-by-step commands from a dumbed-down book about one piece of increasingly expensive software. I know doing it the way they do now is easy for the college, but it's not really teaching students much about what they can do with computers. So when the class is over, I plan to write a letter to the college asking them to change the course as I suggested above. I'm not real hopeful, but what the heck. Do folks out there have any good suggestions as to what might be the most persuasive arguments I can make?"
Sure, Just Compare Them to UK High Schools (Score:5, Interesting)
If you really wanted to go the extra mile and spend a little bit of money on this "letter" you could buy a small SD flash card and spend $25 on a Raspberry Pi and work through this tutorial as you work through your intro course [cam.ac.uk]. Then when you're done you can get the Raspberry Pi to start and have the sole purpose be to display your letter to the staff. Just mail them the Raspberry Pi, the flash card, a USB to USB Micro cord and a short HDMI cable. Just write instructions to plug it into a USB port and monitor then in the letter explain how you used the GNU Toolchain and wrote the rest of this code yourself. It might be too much for some of the other students but it was cheaper than the textbook. If you can do it then your once great alma mater is selling its students short.
A letter can be crumpled up and thrown away. A Raspberry Pi can as well but I guarantee it's going to hurt like hell
Re:Just pass the course and move on (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was taking courses for my associate degree for information technology, I had to take a similar bullshit course for MS Orifice.. er.. Office.
I asked several of the school administrators why such a clearly nonsense class was required for (what at the time) was a fairly hard-core curriculum featuring CISCO CCNA certification training, A+&Network+ cert training, Novell Netware cert training, Database Programming, and general programming courseware.
The answer, was that they had been pressured into it, because of requirements for in-house tech staff to be more than just proficient with MS's offerings, but be sufficiently fluent in the packages that they can provide quick and rapid responces to support questions from less technical office workers.
Essentially, they need/want you to be able to "help" the vacuous "office marys" out there tha can't quite remember how to use the mail/merge feature, despite using it EVERY SINGLE DAY.
(Compare, that would be like a programmer not remembering how to use a macro, or how to call a library, THAT THEY WROTE, and use every day-- and need a programming specialist to help them debug their output... because of their abysmal level of incompetence.)
Really, in that light, the requirement to have MS's office suite s an intro level class makes sense, in a horrible and twisted way.
More sense would be to have a competency test for office workers, but that would exclude a considerable number of office staff that are employed due to nepotism. Instead, and expensive support network is required to ensure that such employees are halfass productive.
Re:Just pass the course and move on (Score:4, Interesting)
If there’s any industry willing to quash innovation and progress to save its stodgy existence, it’s book publishing. [pandodaily.com] Sales reps have become incredibly adept at the care and feeding of the university faculty that they depend upon to adopt their books. [blogspot.com] even private industrial leaders and economic pragmatists like Alan Greenspan have begun to criticize the decline of traditional liberal arts education and the rise of the corporate university as economically and socially disastrous. [amazon.com]
Good luck on your quest.
Re:When I was in high school (Score:4, Interesting)
As I said, in MY experience, it did not make much difference I got recruited while in college. Obviously the mileage may vary depending on your field/area/company. That is why slashdot is so great, it attracts people from all over to share their piece of humanity.
Obviously you have invested a lot in your education and I respect that a lot. If you ever visit Quebec, I hope we can share a beer.
Re:Just pass the course and move on (Score:4, Interesting)
Without question. When planning a network you need answers to lots of questions that your bosses don't want to /simply cannot answer, like "how many users will be on this segment, and what will they be doing?", combined with the thought of "how many users will be added within the next 10 years, and how will their use case change over that time?"
Usually, you get an answer along the lines of "I dunno" at best and "that's what I hired you for" at worst.
This is what leads to quite a few incorrect assumptions during topology planning that come back to haunt you in horrible, horrible ways down the line, and cause many generations of incumbant administrators to curse you with their dying breaths.
I am not in any way deriding that level of difficulty. Merely pointing out that such difficlty is far greater than "click the bolded B icon to turn on bold."
Subnet planning, collision domain planning, and building topology planning are considerably more technical.
Re:When I was in high school (Score:1, Interesting)
Funny anecdote, but years ago, I was traveling from Germany to England for work (this was well before the EU). As an American working for a Swedish company with interests all over Europe, this was actually my first time to the UK. As I got off the concourse, I saw everyone lining up (sorry, queuing up, as this was the UK) to get through Customs. I saw one very long line on the right, and a significantly shorter one on the left.
Being the brilliant American that I am, I got into the shorter line, thinking nothing of it. After about a half hour of waiting, I finally got to the front of the line and presented my passport. The customs official took one look at my passport, gave me a quizical and thoughtful look, and promptly told me, " It's been a bloody long time since the Colonies were a part of the Empire..." It was at that point I realized I had lined up in the customs line intended for British Commonwealth citizens. As it was, the official was very kind and went ahead and passed me on through, the whole time, I'm sure, thinking about the cheeky American who got one over on them.
Re:When I was in high school (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh hell, it is worse than that.
I was applying internally, for a position that was created just for me: Datacenter migration and relocation architect. Unless you had the code, you could not apply, and I was the only person applying.
Except I kept getting rejected. The automated software kept rejecting my resume, despite the fact the parameters were set using a copy of my resume.
Eventually it escalated. The escalation triggered a re-evaluation of the HR system because of the obvious fact that qualified people were getting cut out of the system.
Exactly how many qualified and talented people were lost to this IT employer it is hard to say, but senior technical management was not amused.
Now when we want to hire another Architect, we actually get quite a few qualified architects. Selection comes down to what industry we need experience in and how close they are to the target customer.