(c)A NEW APPROACH to TRAINING COMPUTER USERS by Jerome Laulicht; Phd and Lois B. Laulicht Computer Consumer Consultants of WV. Valley Head, WV. 304- 339 -2172 A New Approach to Training Computer Users Very recently a few prominent computer columnists commented upon the problems of lack of training for computer users. That these columns all appeared within a very short time frame is in itself interesting. That their articles were contrary to conventional computer wisdom is even more extraordinary. For some time we have been trying to get a handle on this very difficult chicken-egg problem. Implicit in its definition are a wide variety of very basic industry beliefs and industry values. Just as the failed Russian coup of several weeks back changed our world forever so has the advent of the cheap 9600 baud modem. The focus of the articles were the lacks, the gaps, and the weakneses of what purports to be training. There were also some comments about new Windows language tools which 'open, just a crack the door to programming for everyone." The inherent difficulties of training for any discipline charged with the conventional wisdom of simultaneosly being 'good at math', super with detail, being very smart ,having an excellent memory and a good typist to boot, is very scarey to novice users. It is also apparent that only a handful of people view lack of solid training as an issue or an industry concern. The numbers drop even further when one discusses the need for serious changes or training innovations. As we started developing our approaches these last months, many of our assumptions had to be scrapped and we had to invent some rather non-traditional approaches for training as well as new assumptions about the perceived need for training. The tiny cascade of brief comments and reports alluding to training people to use PC's make us feel somewhat less isiolated. Clearly the new language tools are being seen as rather important to warrant the competitions and reports. Clearly informal consensus has occured or is being formed as it relates to the perceived ability of competent but ordinary computer users to learn to program in one of a variety of Windows basic languages. Something is happening--if the judges are judges of anything - -and it may well be a change for the better. Even making big allowances for the fact that company development teams are not reliable guides to ease of learning and use, it is clear that the programming scene has already changed. The spurt of available new work for creating Windows programs has given new life to the old hope--well, the hope of some--that many sophisticated computer users can learn to develop programming skills. It is not a question of secretaries using Object Vision to develop complex front ends for data bases. Few could, given how little most secretaries or most other computer users know about computers, data base programs, etc. Rather it is a question of whether there are methods, languages, and tools available so that moxey computer users can do more than quickies or fun and games programs. Some of the commentary and advertising about tools like Visual Basic, Realizer and especially Toolbook suggest this possibility. We think that the door can be pushed open much wider than most people presently recognize. It is within this context that we are attempting to initiate a dialog with you and others. As usual, what happens is partly a function of what people believe can happen and want to see happen. The fact is that there is not much effective training demand and whatever limited demand exists is largely for cheap and quick training in limited skills. The call is primarily for training in specific applications and in techniques and tools which hopefully avoid the need to understand the operating system. The irony is that this limited training, costs as much as it does, but this is another matter. The computer training, which is offered, is too bound by conventional restraints and interests which sharply limit effectiveness and increase costs and frustration. This is so even when sophisticated students are being taught sophisticated language tools. A striking example is a seminar for programmers, offered by a very respectable company selling the tool, which largely covers the same topics as the manual and tutorial which came with the tool. Whatever else has been said, it is simply not just a case of new tools which are easier to learn and use. Of equal and perhaps greater importance is that the industry now has access to the largest pool of computer literate users that has ever existed. However, none of the changing elements in the equation begin to deal with problems of motivation for training and how the desire to learn is translated into time, money and opportunity for working adults to learn difficult skills.. Products that are being priced to make them attractive to these 'amateurs'--even if they are billed as temporary special prices for special people, do not provide the knowledge to access sources for assistance to get beyond baby steps. Unfortunately even seasoned and literate users have difficulty in framing the correct question or even knowing what the correct question is to ask. We're not discussing the quick fix that tech support people do fairly well but rather helping people develop a frame of reference that is translatable from tool to tool. The second important 'shove' comes from cheap memory, open stocked computer parts, and the most significant and relavent hardware change of all, --the cheap 9600 baud modem to access the world of the BBS and information. Anyone who frequents their local BBS tied to a national network can learn to build a PC, upgrade a PC and stay on top of the new and emerging technologies. Where to buy it, how to modify it, and when to junk it! The variety of subjects are endless....even a few good tutorials. The conferences provide people to exchange with and argue with along with gurus and others who have little patience with the novice bbser. New people are lurkers and their mistakes in ettiquette and form are barely tolerated. The image of the bloated super market security guard comes roiling in and indeed these folks are protecting turf. The network conferences are dominated by industry middle management professionals with their own agendas, careers and status at risk. There is, however, the more fundamental problem oflearning to get on with a modem, finding one's way around a board, and then developing the skill and confidence to take advantage of this marvelous invention to grow and develop. As the sheer numbers of people increase to access these boards, (and they are and will in even greater numbers than we can imagine) the problems of information access to create individual opportunites is going to run up against the biases, styles, assumptions, and norms of the industry which dominate this public forum. It is here where it is most loudly articulated and where we are encountering a set of inter-linked assumptioms, beliefs and behaviors which determine the conclusion: only professionals can learn to use, for example, Visual Basic and presumably all similar tools, and that there are too few exceptions to this rule to matter. The best alternative view is that so few people both want to and can learn that the question is unimportant. This complex web makes it difficult to talk or write tersely about our ideas. And yet, we are seeing contradictory cues and getting some interesting mixed messages as we discuss this with people heavily involved in several of the companies which create the tools. Essentially, we are getting the complex gavotte approach-avoidance messages. We are also encountering a lack of understanding on some key issues in the proposal resulting in a 'no' but a worried 'no'. Are people fearful of ignoring a change and ideas which might be important. Or would many people agree with Peter Coffey that the question about the new language tools must be--who is the intended user and who wonders aloud whether the software bottleneck will be broken, by making every one their own programmer. Little or no effort is made in developing these tools to consistently construct them so that they ARE much easier to use. Toolbook is the most striking exception but outfits like Within Technology (Realizer) have moved partially in the direction of the 'amateur'. It is hard to tell this from talking with them, reading their ads, or looking at their pricing policy. Why the mixed cues? Is it simply the business thing to do to try to put out feelers to all categories of potential customers while maintaining the high status, even snob appeal, of the product. Would most programmers refuse a product which targets 'amateurs' Does anyone make a serious effort to beta test their tools with amateurs, more precisely programming illiterate users and revise it partly based upon their reactions and criticisms? Yet the contradictions abound, suggesting there is flexibility. Borland creates ObjectVision which certainly is not difficult to learn. Here is a high powered language tool developer which also develops a rather difficult tool in Pascal for Windows. Clipper has been around for awhile..Alpha and RBase have data base programs which they insist can be used by amateurs to create customomized, complex approaches without using difficult Dbase languages. And many seem to take at least brief hard stares at the brave new world in which many more of us could write complex programs. Ambivalence abounds and we partly ensure that we get self-fulfilling prophecies. None of this is an either-or proposition. There are arguments on both sides. Despite the history that Basic is a simple language, VB is not an easy way to construct programs. Realizer probably is not either despite the implications of some of the comments written about it. We make some fundamental errors, I think, if one of our goals is programming for amateurs. The failure to take the issue into account in designing Beta tests and choosing the testers is one key. Even more fundamental is what we have been doing here--dividing the universe into two groups. Ridiculous--we know this is a phony dichotomy and that there is far too much specialization. We know, for example, that we will never get many good computer based programs geared for elementary and high school agendas until programmers learn more about education, AND more classroom teachers really understand computers. Further, there are other areas where this is equally true. For example, do we have any understanding of why kids catch on quickly with video games and love them but are often bored silly in school with computer based training. So what do we do, how do we do it, and where do we place the steps toward change.? A minor revolution has been happening under our noses, with the crucial events occurring over time and the consequences still unplanned and certainly unclear! The industry does sponsor a limited number of training events for computer professionals. These are the paying customers who will develop the third party tools and write the new software. One cannot really argue about their focus except to assert that it doesn't make any business sense at all over the long haul. One can take the hard headed stance that one shouldn'targue with sucess. However, we've all become painfully aware that even the big boys can get into trouble and lose more than their market share. It is really necessary to restate the worn out cliche that looking ahead and planning ahead is really worthwhile if either corporations or individuals want to stay in the game. The "University" run by Microsoft and the 4-5 day seminars offered by outfits like Whitewater can only meet the needs of a few people. Thinking that Community or Junior colleges are places where many people, including new users getting computers for home and home office use, could get quality training in the use of computers is a hope which has little relation to the realities of daily existence and the missions at most schools. As for training in language tools, this seems hopeless. It is doubtful that such places could do more than partial training, albeit at relatively low cost, in a few major applications. Few could do at all well in giving quality training in using operating systems/ environments or in applications which are not widely used. When looking just at how these schools recruit and pay instructors-- they do depend largely on part-time instructors, often harried and underpaid graduate students--quickly disabuses one of much optimism. The situation is even worse if we think of the adult education programs at most American High schools. It is almost a sick joke to think anything with a semblance of real quality is possible at places where many teachers barely understand computers and those teachers who do have knowledge speak computereeze. At any rate, many who need help with computers cannot use such places given that the rigidities in scheduling conflict with the bread and butter demands for many busy adults. How do adults with jobs, mates, parents and children (all of whom can make unscheduled demands) cope with the uncompromising time schedule of a class or keep up when they miss a crucial session. Of course it's possible but it is far from the most desirable model. Within the context of our developing plans, would busy adults feel they would best learn in a somewhat unconventional way and setting? The set-up for learning we envision will be much more accessible and certainly more flexible for working adults. As for the sellers of hardware and software providing training, it is difficult to envision them as much of a source of training for several reasons. Few know enough or care enough to be able to select good teachers and monitor them. Few would know whether a course has merit, and finally they would care mostly about classes which generate profits or sell more hardware. I for one am not encouraged when I read of a retailer being able to get $175 and up for teacherless classes with only $12 in out-of pocket costs per student after buying the training program. It may be a multi- media show/tutorial and bully for the profit! Why worry about what is being taught and learned ,or if the customer will come back again. The dollars now demand which permeates the industry as well as the greater society is taking us into the rather scary waters of a society divided by information access for those computer educated sufficiently to take advantage of its rewards. Some Very Silly Ideas Perhaps Beta testers should not be chosen because they are programmers but because they want to program. By any definition they are very computer literate users. They could criticize efforts of tool developers from this perspective. Maybe we should seriously consider two versions of many language tools. Not a professional and an amateur but a harder and easier one to use with maximum effort to give both versions almost identical power. Maybe a conference/meeting seriously tackling this subject-- really crazy. Byte or PC Mag or PC Week orone or several of the BBSes sponsor it so that it has enough status and cachet for the assumption of quality. We just might start getting real honest and blunt when we begin an open dialogue of enormous consequence. Naively, we did not realize we probably had to prove our contention when we wrote our proposal. We were wrong to think it obvious to 'all' that there was a big enough demand out there or money to be made as a result of this latent market. A Not So Silly Idea * * This idea was proposed having VisualBasic in mind. The notion is, however, quite generic. Draft Proposal: Online Training for Programming in VisualBasic The following represents a developing approach to teach people how to use Visual Basic in order to learn to create programs for Windows. This approach is neither a book or manual, an individual tutorial on disk, an interactive BBS conference or a conventional college classroom. Rather, it will use or share some of the valuable characteristics of each of these methods to help people learn a technique of programming which is both quite old--or basic--and rather newish--object oriented programming. Hopefully, we should be able to combine many of the strengths of each of these programming methods into a different way of teaching and learning--a way which can be useful and valuable to many people who want to learn to program for Windows. The goal is be able to offer classes both to programming novices and hackers, as well as to programmers looking for a new and much less difficult language tool for Windows. For the second group, we will have to pay attention to the sharp differences among programmers in their experience with and knowledge of previous DOS versions of Basic. We should be able to offer help to those who do not know Basic at all well but who are attracted to VB as a tool, and to others who are rather conversant with one of the other versions of Basic. Finally, we have to be concerned about using an approach which provides training at a reasonable cost so that it can be taken advantage of by both non-professionals and programmers . We want to offer a BBS sponsored course on programming with Visual Basic.We want to do this not once but a number of times, assuming there is enough interest and that we can establish contact with many potential students. We have started the process of establishing contact with a number of people who might be potential instructors to teach parts or modules of such courses. We do not want to compete with or duplicate what Universities do but want to provide training for people who already have most of the intellectual skills and interests to learn a specific programming discipline. We want to train "adults" without the rigidities, customs, usual practices, and rather high costs of the college classroom. As 486 prices continue to decline and 586 based computers start arriving in numbers, corporate America will be forced to re-evaluate its expensive commitment to mainframes. Windows was a faint hope for years but MS persisted in producing an OS at a reasonable cost, useful to large numbers of people, and with a fair amount of backward compatibility. All of these attributes apply to VB . As the word gets out to the Basic of all flavors programming community that this language makes programming in the Windows environment something that can be done with much less pain., whatever interest that has already been generated will increase with the knowledge that one can build upon previously acquired skills. Like Windows, VB represents a real challenge and opportunity for many people. There is a demand to be a part of and growing motivation to take advantage of the Windows phenomena. In addition, there is also the interesting challenge of training up non-programming computer users. Dr. Jerome Laulicht, Emeritus,University of Pittsburgh , will organize the teaching and get commitments from the "visiting" experts. We have tentatively settled on the general approach of creating teaching modules-- one or perhaps two people will be responsible for each module. The instructor will provide BOTH real time training, and also place small tutorials, exercises, assignments, etc., on-line for students to pick up for independent learning. Thus, there will be scheduled times for the class to assemble with the instructor (almost surely, each module will have to be scheduled more than once for a class to accommodate varied schedules of students)and discretionary efforts for individuals, etc.- -i.e., the learner will have to decide whether and when to do it. Thus, the instructor will have to provide some feed-back to individuals---answering questions during "class meetings", responding to questions left for him on the bulletin board outside of sessions, and in commenting on assignments. We will also have to decide whether it makes sense to encourage and provide opportunities for students to join in relevant gabfests (conferences) without the instructor. It is not obvious that people would welcome and use such an option in this context. There probably should also be an analogy to office hours- - times when students know that the instructor is available on line for chats by appointment. The instructors will be recruited from among the people who have worked on tools for VB, perhaps one or two people from Microsoft who worked on VB, people who have written several applications in VB, and hopefully even a few people with extensive programming experience (say with games) who are in the midst of learning VB to write for Windows . We would also hope we can usefully consult with those responsible for creating the on-line help system, tutorial and manuals for VB. It will be made clear to everyone that their work might also be used for a disk/book combo. Their contributions would obviously remain their work--as in any publication with an editor and contributors. The teachers, then, would get paid for the development and teaching, along with other fringes like publicity of name and product. If the project is successful, teachers would end up offering their modules much more than one time, so that there is ample pay-off for the development and preparation efforts. The size of classes would have to be limited to no more than 30 people to allow for discussions by the group with adequate opportunity for participation. However, an instructor could conceivablly give his course simultaneously on an endless number of cooperating boards with the proviso of time for interactive exchange. Windows Online of the San Francisco area has agreed to provide the electronic home for(c)Learning Online. Its sysop Frank Mahaney has contributed to the evolution of this notion from almost the very beginning. We are presently getting agreement from other computer professionals to act as resource people and mentors. We need your expertise in general terms about the proposal as it might impact upon your client community, whether you are a VB developer, programmer, Sysop, or writer. Our goal is to develop a series of Windows related tutorials that are interesting, fun, valuable, and most of all understandable. Written and spoken in English as opposed to computereeze! The question of developing a course of study for computer literate but programming illiterate users is a rather challenging problem. It is this notion, we believe, that will continue to generate interest in this idea. People are brinking on a fuller appreciation of the unlimited possibilities provided by the PC. Windows3 brings the potential home 'graphically' with the built in security of being able to continue to utilize the machine as before. The notion of creating online training in a variety of adjunct areas is quite obvious. We have barely scratched the surface and are continually defining areas where one can do a credible job using the approach of online training. Many thanks for your time and interest. We look forward to your comments. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please forward comments to Lois Laulicht: PCRELAY:Chan1 Jerome Laulicht : CIS72540,215 Requests for info: Computer Consumer Consultants Conley Run Rd. Valley Head, WV 26294 304-339-2172