Hi,
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.
I am afraid that I tend to agree with Mike (full disclosure - we share an office). I think you have to be careful how you do these things otherwise making statements like: "...I might wonder what they're doing in academia ..." come out sounding pompous and arrogant with the end result that you will end up alienating some/part/all of your audience.
It would be so much better if you approached this way: you know what you are doing with excel is really cool. You can do what you are doing there with R this way and then you can do so much more ... rubbishing other people's tools/methods is just going to shut them off to trying new appraoches.
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.
Excel has it's issues and shortcomings as do all languages/tools. They each have zealots and niche markets where they work well - if I am a wet lab person who has a simple interest in doing some simple plots data analysis then excel is fine. You are not going to win any converts by telling them what they are doing is rubbish or patronising them by saying it's time to take the training wheels off. Acknowledge
what they use and tell them by using these other tools they can do so much more - that way you will win converts.
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.
I wouldn't tell them they are using training wheels or that their methods are substandard or deficient or wrong. I would say: cool, that's great but let me show another way where you can do so much more ... that way you can take them on a journey.
Mario
~ Tim _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
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