> It isn't productive if they think they're being patronised then go > on the defensive, get irritated or switch off altogether. As an > example, an attendee at a SWC workshop in September 2014 commented: > > >I never had any formal instruction in Excel, and instead have > >clawed my way into a decent working knowledge of it over the last > >almost two decades. I am very proud of what I can do with it, and > >I have found it of great use, but I know there is a ton I don't > >know, so I was looking forward to that session. However, that > >session ended up being bitterly offensive. The basic message being > >conveyed was "you are an idiot for using Excel to do anything > >expect to put data into R, and an even worse idiot if you do > >things to make data comprehensible to a human." There were snide > >cartoons, there was condescension... It was infuriating. ... > >By the end I was livid, tired, and very stressed.
It sounds like they were shunted into an R course they didn't care about. We should all take responsibility for the way we market our courses. If someone is perfectly happy with Excel, then I might wonder what they're doing in academia, but I wouldn't push them to do an R course. More awareness around the shortcomings of Excel can be advocated as a way to attract people into R courses, but if they only find out about it after they sign up then you've falsely advertised what you're teaching. You can't force someone to take training wheels off, it just terrifies and confuses them. You can only show them videos of people doing stunts without training wheels, and help them find their balance and pick them up and give them a hug when they fall -- after they agree to take off their own training wheels. ~ Tim _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
