Class time is not infinite, so for many methods I have students carry out exercises using only one kind of software - after all, my goal is not to teach 'how to use software' but 'how to select, carry out and interpret simple statistical analysis'. Statistical methods get updated, reformatted and given new menus FAR less often than statistical software, and I'd like my class to have at least a fighting chance of having some usable, non-obsolete knowledge/skills (oh, who am I kidding - notes and handouts in a folder with barely a trace on the old grey matter) when they graduate.
For the final assignment, students are given a problem and some data, and have to work through the process of planning and carrying out a statistical analysis, using whichever software they choose. Fine. If they are particularly keen to use a specific piece of software (e.g. the one which came free with their computer, GCFS, so that they don't have to find pants and leave the house to go to a campus log-in point and access the expensive professional stuff for free, or pay the small licensing fee to install a student copy of same on their own computer), that sometimes means they need to work out how to do their chosen test, they can't just use the class notes.
This means my inbox is continually pinging with emails of the "I can't find out how to do Test in GCFS, it's not in the notes and I've googled and tried lots of links and I can't find anything!" kind. I try to reply in a positive, supportive, encouraging matter (out of principle, as well as because of the rapid approach of HappySheet day). But sometimes, when the first thing I find on googling the phrase "Test in GCFS" is a step by step walk through of the method, that's really hard.
I honestly don't think that it's always because they didn't try, sure some of the students are lazy little so-and-sos but many of them are hard working and earnest and were always good kids in school and bring an endearing straightforward honesty into university with them (in my student population, I get relatively few "but I worked on it for days!" comments when work gets a poor mark for being rushed, an "well I only started last night, of course it's rushed!" response is more normal). It's just… I don't know, if there isn't an app for it, they can't do it? If putting half of the word, misspelt, into google doesn't work, they don't have any idea what to do next?
Digital Natives my arse, as my northerly neighbours would say, more like Digital Numptys. Digital Tourists is perhaps kinder, but today, Numpty is the word!
-- Grumpy Academic
I've watched my students type "google" into their browser address bar--usually either Chrome or Firefox, so the address bar itself *is Google*--in order to get to the Google search page. So they search for Google to get to Google to search for whatever it is they're searching for.
ReplyDeleteI've also watched them search Google for the login page for our LMS, when the address for the LMS is stupid simple--like, lms.university.edu. Even worse when they start to type LMS and the address bar autocompletes it--and they search Google anyway.
I've seen our director of IT do all of these, right after he was unable to copy/paste a URL from an email into the address bar.
Delete*headdesk*
DeleteI'll admit to occasionally searching for google in google, but only when I'm pretty tired/distracted.
Delete"the rapid approach of HappySheet day"
ReplyDeleteHAH! Bring a cake! Happy Sheet Day to you!
I feel your statistical pain, my brother / sister. You might want to check out EZAnalyze, a free E**** plugin that I have found very useful. It's limited, but useful.
ReplyDeleteGrumpy, this is my life described To. A. T. whenever I teach advanced hamsterology statistics; the prerequisite course is introductino to hamsterology statistics, but you'd never know it from how clueless they are about everything, even some basic data management in E****, which apparently they all should have learned plenty about in a compsci course everyone is required to take if they wish to graduate with a science degree at the uni. I have to teach it again in a year's time, and I'm already walking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking about what I will have to endure.
ReplyDeleteMy midterm evaluations included a request that I remind them of upcoming homework assignments.
ReplyDeleteIf only a technology existed which could enable them to set a reminder for such events. This fantastic gadget could, ideally, sit in the palm of their hand or pocket and display messages to help them remember the things which are important to them. Until such a day dawns, I guess I'll have to keep reminding them.
Oh good lord, yes, the inability to use the tech they are glued to... A couple of weeks ago I watched as all seven of my Study Skills Support Group keyed the agreed date and time of our next meeting into their SmartBoxes and set their little alarms (at least, they all SAID that is what they were doing, and I was RIGHT THERE, I know the nearest two were in the calendar app for sure). Did ANY of them arrive at the meeting?
DeleteOf course not. Because I didn't send them a reminder email.
Last time I did THAT, they said they only read their university email once a week or so so there was no point in it...
-- Grumpy Academic ---
Computer Science department reportedly started seeing a drop in the fraction of incoming student with prior programming experience with the rise of the interactive web (which is to say, with the advent of every single computer coming with a working development environment in the form of a web browser). Everyone had access to a programming platform and yet fewer people where actually doing any programming.
ReplyDeleteOnce the technology is powerful enough and easy enough fewer people actually know what is happening under the hood or how to get much out of it.
Smart phones have taken us way past threshold on that. They know how to check the sports scores, send text messages, post to social media, and snap pictures of the board instead of taking notes. Beyond that it's a crapshoot.
This.
DeleteLearning to use a computer used to force students to think carefully about a problem, be precise with their instructions, and check the output carefully before accepting it. What passes for a computer science course these days is a how-to-choose-items-from-a-menu course. Now that software has been made "idiot proof", we've encouraged people to be idiots.
(I know, I know: "Back when I was a lad we had to walk barefoot through the snow at 4am, for a crust of bread and.... Hey! get off my lawn!")
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DeleteOnce the technology is powerful enough and easy enough fewer people actually know what is happening under the hood or how to get much out of it.
DeleteA most felicitous choice of words.
Automotive technology has seen its share of advances as well: piston rings and valve guides that don't leak oil into the combustion chamber; platinum-tipped spark plugs that last 160000 km; in place of distributor and carburettor, electronic ignition and fuel injection systems whose parts do not routinely break or go out of adjustment. All of these make a car so easy for the average user that they quite literally do not need to open the hood between regular service intervals, when they take it to a shop where someone else will do that for them.
Consequently, they have little idea what's under the hood. The car accelerates when and because the gear selector is in "D" and pressure is applied to a certain pedal; the understanding need go no further.
The comp version of this is that, 2/3-3/4 of the way through the semester, I'm still getting students telling me that they can't access a particular journal article for which they have the full bibliographic information "because it's asking me to pay for it."
ReplyDeleteWhat they mean, of course, is that there's no direct link from google scholar (or just plain google) to the article. They'd have to actually search for it in a library database (or maybe even order a copy from the local consortium, which takes 2-3 days, or via interlibrary loan, which takes only a tad longer when you're talking about an electronic copy of an article). Mostly, they meant that they've forgotten about that handy step-by-step library tutorial that is linked from the LMS that takes them through all the options for obtaining full text of an article, free and quite quickly.
At least I didn't actually write the tutorial myself. If I had, this would be even more dispiriting.
And it is, indeed, pretty easy to figure out GCFS by googling how-tos. In fact, that's the only reason I have any idea how to use it at all.
ReplyDeleteOne of these days, I really do need to take statistics (not to learn how to use GCFS, but because it's increasingly the language spoken by all sorts of academics and administrators, and I'd like to be able to more intelligently call out those who are drawing unsupportable conclusions from dubious data).
You have administrators who speak statistics, CC?
DeleteCan we trade?
Mine wouldn't know a t-test from a t-square (or a t-square from chi-square, come to that).
One of yours for any number of mine?
Mine wouldn't know any of those things and would say they prefer Earl Grey to chai tea.
DeleteI think you're both describing the same adminflakes. Cassandra's admins probably do prattle on about statistics and "data driven evidence based blah blah blah". But I'm guessing they go data-dredging through confounded data until they find the one result (p<0.05!) that tells them that their pre-conceived notions of edu-babble wankery were right all along, and pronounce: "See, it's scientific and everything!"
DeleteI'm not actually knowledgeable enough to be sure (hey, at least I know it), but I strongly suspect that R and/or G nailed it. (some of them, mind you, are fully responsible and careful and all that, but there's a real temptation to cherry-pick results, or perform mathematical calculations on really weak/questionable data -- student evals, anyone? -- and then treat the result as hard numbers/unassailable truth. It really upsets the numbers-are-solid folks when one (i.e. I) point(s) out that the numbers with which they're working often derive from questions expressed in words, and how those questions are asked, and what they assume, imply, etc., matter).
DeleteYeah, that whole word/questions lead to the numbers thing that Cassandra mentions is often the province of the social sciences, that nebulous void between those much-derided humanities and those often-too-accoladed STEM fields. It's why I was always an advocate for a well-rounded education that included ALL of those fields, but, well, I'm a nobody. Stupid interdisciplinarian!
Delete