Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!umd5!purdue!decwrl!ucbvax!UHUPVM1.BITNET!EPSYNET From: EPSYNET@UHUPVM1.BITNET (Psychnet Newsletter and Bulletin Board) Newsgroups: sci.psychology Subject: psychnet Message-ID: <8804231925.AA10736@jade.berkeley.edu> Date: 23 Apr 88 16:32:50 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Psychnet Distribution list Organization: The Internet Lines: 38 From: Steve Stalzer Carolyn Kotlas writes (in response to Marge Hermans), "[computer workshop] students seem to be more comfortable with 'cookbooks' [lists of keystrokes] as though all they have to do is memorize these keystrokes and the program will perform as expected. I worry that this will limit their use and exploration of the features not covered in the workshop." As the manager of a Cognitive Science computer lab, used by linguistics, philosophy, and psychology faculty and grad students, I have had ample opportunity to observe how novice users learn to operate the microvaxes. Due to resource constraints we offer no training except for a fairly well written manual, which covers basics, such as logging on, elementary UNIX commands, mail, and starting out in Emacs. In a sense, we are giving them a set of recipes to accomplish the most common goals. Any additional material must be learned by the users from their peers or from reference manuals. I have found that most novice users will not go beyond the set of commands and keystrokes which they originally learned, preferring to rely on these basic tools for all of their work, rather than using them as a basis to further explore the capabilities of the system. They do, as Carolyn said, remain novices. It is clear that in many cases the user has almost no understanding of computers and therefore does not understand exactly how or what a certain command is doing in terms of data, files, control, etc. It is also clear that these types of users (often faculty) have no time or inclina- tion to learn about the computer - they see the computer as a way of obtaining specific results, and they focus on what they want to accomplish immediately, not on what opportunities are open to them in the future if they were to devote some time to mastering the beast. This type of user relys solely on causation concepts :"if I press this key I will get a desired effect." This works fairly well in controlled situations, but leads to a brick wall in novel situations (such as getting into an unfamiliar mode, or creating an unwanted modification in a buffer) and hence to unnecessary burdens on the system manager who must provide the solutions. I therefore conclude that cookbooks are a good way to thrust the user into a computing environment in an immediately gratifying way, but they are only a starting point. Minimally, the user must also have some knowledge of HOW the system works in addition to WHAT it does. An educated novice is soon a self-sufficient expert. --Steve Stalzer