Wrong Teaching of Excel

[Scott]

I was recently concerned about an online tutorial for Excel I viewed
recently for a course I'm doing.
I was fortunate when doing a business administration certificate level
course to get the basic back ground information on a number of tools and
tasks used in the work place.
Such as learning how to do book keeping manually so I could have more of an
understanding of how that works before using an of the "everything is done
for you" account keeping software.
My learning of spreadsheets and databases was done using Microsoft software
that was used before the Office suite was born.
The online tutorial of Excel I viewed that other day started off with
showing how to make a page look pretty.
Where as back several years ago I was told that the basic difference between
Spreadsheets and Databases (people often mistake excel as a database tool).
Spreadsheets are used as a "what if" tool.
Databases are a list of information - telephone directory is a database,
software like Access are used to work with electronic databases.
Quite often in my work in recent years, a lot of Excel use is for filling
out forms for various tasks.
Excel is a great tool for designing forms and you may often use very little
or none of the caculating functions.
Teachers of Excel should emphasise the basic purpose of Excel and basically
what spreadsheets are used for.
Instead of showing an example of a finished spreadsheets as an intro they
should work through the various aspects of the application.
For example the Excel documents is known as a book.
Data is entered onto sheets.
Then there's all the stuff about cells, columns, rows, charts and so on.
After having the basic fundamentas of Spreadsheets stamped on their brains.
Students should be taught how to enter basic information, basic calculations
and control how data should appear.
Then they should go furthur into other aspects of Excel such as sourcing
data from other sources and more complex calculations.
My knowledge of Excel may not be brilliant but my original learning of the
Microsoft Works suite and what Spreadhsheets are helped give me a headstart
on the Excel application.

Scott

 

[Pete_UK]

So, did you make your views known to the online tutorial site?

No two people will learn in the same way, so who is to say that the
way you learnt is the best way for someone else?

Pete

 

[Bruce Sinclair]

So, did you make your views known to the online tutorial site?

No two people will learn in the same way, so who is to say that the
way you learnt is the best way for someone else?

That said, making a spreadsheet look 'pretty' as the first lesson, does seem
rather a backwards way of doing things to me. I'd rather have some idea
what a spreadsheet does and how for my first lesson (with some design tips
to make things easier later), then much later worry about how pretty it can
look. That way lies html emails.

 

[Jon Peltier]

I gave an Excel class for some middle school teachers. Before the class even
started, I knew I was in trouble, because they were all saying "I heard that
Excel is so hard." I figured that in the two hours I had, the best I could
do is make them not afraid of Excel.

So we started making things "pretty". They typed text and numbers into
cells, they formatted the text, changed cell and border colors, all that. I
showed them the tearaway formatting palettes, and they wished PowerPoint and
Word had them as well. But they do, I told them, and already they had
learned something they could use.

After an hour we got into worksheet features, like sorting and simple
calculations. We copied data from one place and pasted it elsewhere. Finally
we even made a few simple charts, and formatted them. A few of the teachers
left thinking about the things they were going to chart, like class grades
and so forth.

Showing how to make a spreadsheet pretty may be backwards from the point of
view of someone who already knows a little about spreadsheets. But for my
class, comprised of complete newcomers to Excel, making the spreadsheet
pretty gave them some familiarity with what spreadsheets are and how to get
around them. It demystified spreadsheets.

- Jon

 

[Bruce Sinclair]

I gave an Excel class for some middle school teachers. Before the class even
started, I knew I was in trouble, because they were all saying "I heard that
Excel is so hard." I figured that in the two hours I had, the best I could
do is make them not afraid of Excel.

So we started making things "pretty". They typed text and numbers into
cells, they formatted the text, changed cell and border colors, all that. I
showed them the tearaway formatting palettes, and they wished PowerPoint and
Word had them as well. But they do, I told them, and already they had
learned something they could use.

After an hour we got into worksheet features, like sorting and simple
calculations. We copied data from one place and pasted it elsewhere. Finally
we even made a few simple charts, and formatted them. A few of the teachers
left thinking about the things they were going to chart, like class grades
and so forth.

Showing how to make a spreadsheet pretty may be backwards from the point of
view of someone who already knows a little about spreadsheets. But for my
class, comprised of complete newcomers to Excel, making the spreadsheet
pretty gave them some familiarity with what spreadsheets are and how to get
around them. It demystified spreadsheets.

Your point is well made ... but I think the approach worked and was
necessary here because :
1) you only had 2 hours.
2) they came prepared with assumptions and little knowledge.

I suspect you could have got them by asking what they wanted to do with XL
and showing them how easy it was to do those things. I note you cleverly
changed what you were going to show them because of the early feedback -
well done.
I guess my approach would have been to give them some examples of why it's
useful and how, and get over the fear/assumptions as we went. I know I use
only a small fraction of XLs functions and power ... and it sounds like
these guys would have used less than that ... at least to start wih. And
every group is different of course.

 

[Jon Peltier]

Your point is well made ... but I think the approach worked and was
necessary here because :
1) you only had 2 hours.
2) they came prepared with assumptions and little knowledge.

I suspect you could have got them by asking what they wanted to do with XL
and showing them how easy it was to do those things. I note you cleverly
changed what you were going to show them because of the early feedback -
well done.
I guess my approach would have been to give them some examples of why it's
useful and how, and get over the fear/assumptions as we went. I know I use
only a small fraction of XLs functions and power ... and it sounds like
these guys would have used less than that ... at least to start wih. And
every group is different of course.

I've wondered how many of the folks in my class have used Excel since then.

- Jon

 

[Bruce Sinclair]

in message news:[email protected]... (snip)

I've wondered how many of the folks in my class have used Excel since then.

Yeah. At least if they didn't then they probably haven't done any damage