I taught two MS Excel classes last month, and am repeating them again this month. As a public librarian, that means that these are classes for the general public. Excel is one of the programs we offer that requires some familiarity with computers and, ideally, Microsoft products in general. It can be a tricky class to teach depending on the make up of the audience. I was lucky last month and ended up with about seven people with similar levels of experience. They all had basic computer skills and they all had a general understanding of what Excel was, but none had ever used it. Perfect!
My Excel part 1 class introduces the software. I explain different kinds of data: alphabetic data, numeric data, and formulas. I go over cell addresses and why we refer to cells by their address rather than their content. I talk about basic formatting like column width (auto fit), wrapping text, and borders. We create a family budget spreadsheet for three months of a year (always include a column called "library donation!"). We do an auto sum to total the amount of money spent each month in each category, as well as the total spent each month. We learn how to copy a formula to other cells.
In the Part 2 class, usually a week or so later, we review part 1 by re-creating that family budget spreadsheet fairly quickly. Then we move into inserting rows and columns, formatting data (ie. currency vs. dates), sorting data, working with multiple sheets in one document, and freezing panes. We also create a basic graph that shows the percentage spent in each category each month.
My handouts are available in my Scribd account. Help yourself to them if you can use them in some way! I really like handouts that go step-by-step through a procedure so that when students leave the class they have a good reminder to practice with. That way they don't get all bogged down with taking notes and not get through the hands-on parts of the class. I want them to really focus on the hands-on activities. The handouts are just extra, really.
Before last month's class, I hadn't taught Excel in a few years. I don't get to teach classes as often as I used to in my old job, and I miss it. Excel is particularly fun to teach (unless, like I mentioned above, the makeup of the class is too skewed between beginners and those with higher level computer skills. That makes ANY class difficult to teach!). The people who take Excel classes are often very motivated and ask interesting and layered questions. They want to know more and are excited to learn short cuts, which I avoid teaching in lower skill-level classes.
Teaching computers in public libraries is an area of interest of mine. I'm curious to know how other libraries approach teaching beginners, and what skills they teach for each program or topic. As a former teacher myself (my undergrad degree is in elementary ed), I'm interested in educational theory, different learning styles, and motivating people to be lifelong learners.
Thanks for the post on this topic, Holly. I teach computer classes to the public, and you really hit the nail on the head about the difficulty you can have with a class full of people at various levels of computer experience. I try to teach most software classes from the perspective of the beginner- because usually even the users who have tried the program before get something out of it. I have tried more advanced classes in the past, and find that there are still users that don't know the program at all, and it makes it hard to teach. So for now, we are focusing on the beginner at our library (http://brightonlibrary.info/tutorials)
ReplyDelete-Sarah Neidert
Yeah - even our "Part 2" classes are really beginner classes. It's basically everything we didn't have time to cover in the Part 1 class. We focus on how the average user will use the software and don't get too fancy with everything its capable of.
DeleteWe focus on basic computer classes (Computer Basics, Intro to the Web, Intro to Email, Basic Job Searching) but also make classes available like Intro to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PageMaker. I teach both Computer Basics and Intro to Excel, so I get students on each end of the scale. I try to screen my Excel students to make sure that they at least have some familiarity with computers, but sometimes--like Tuesday--this fails. Usually these students are extremely motivated, however, and actually show up to class (attendance for a basics class can be less than 50%). I do Excel all on one hour and a half session. How long are your classes?
ReplyDeleteOur classes are 1 1/2 hours long. It usually takes me 50 minutes to an hour to get through the material, and then we take questions and play around.
DeleteI'm not a librarian yet (will graduate from Wayne State in May 2013), but teaching computers in public libraries is interesting to me too. In my current job (not in a library), I have come to realize how many people lack basic computer skills such as file management (e.g., being able to find a document once it's been saved). As a result it is challenging to demonstrate a task requiring the use of an application like Excel when you have to spend a significant amount of time on the basics of computing.
ReplyDeleteWe get a lot of people in our Computer Basics classes who were sent there by their employers, or who are job seeking and know they have to get their skills up to date for the job market. I talk to people at the reference desk every day who don't know how to save a file, or attach a file to an email. Computer literacy is becoming a core need of society, like reading and writing.
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