taylor@hplabs.hp.com (Dave Taylor) (09/30/88)
[This is the editorial column from the latest issue of the BITNET publication "NetMonth", edited by Chris Condon of Yale University. I found it a thought-provoking piece and hope you do too... -- Dave Taylor ] "We learn by doing" I hid her notebook. In retrospect I suppose it was a silly thing to do, but we learned a lot from it. She was a bright, intelligent Co-op student who made my grade point average look like burned waffles. I was the Co-op student she was replacing. As such, I was given the task of passing knowledge to a person obviously more intelligent than me. Worse, she was a snappy dresser. She had a little stenography notebook that she carried around during her training period, and she would write down almost everything I said and did. When it came time to perform a particular task, she would flip to the appropriate page in the notebook and follow the instructions therein. When she ran into trouble she would call me over to help her. She would then add whatever I did to her instructions. I began to wonder whether she was really learning anything at all. The whole idea of working as a Co-op was to gain a kind of knowledge and experience that one can't get from reading a book or taking a test. This was a reasonable facsimile of the real world of computers, with all of its delights and dangers. Somehow this Co-op was taking this experience and reducing it back to the textbook (in this case, notebook) level. So I hid the notebook and asked her to perform some task. She of course protested that she couldn't do it without a reference of some kind. I suggested that there was a real rush on this particular item, and that she had better hurry. It took her a little longer to reach her goal, but when she was done she had a better understanding of the software we were using. It wasn't a matter of pressing F1, typing "A", pressing Control-Q and so on. If the commands were changed or the software was different, she now knew that she had the mental tools to *figure it out*. This is true every time a new user begins using the network to communicate. The concepts of electronic mail, messages, mailing lists, and forums become real tools and challenges, not words and pictures in a book. When a student passes from the world of education to the world of business, they will inevitably be faced with other networks and other software. After BITNET, however, many of these people will have the ability to use these tools and use them effectively. The benefits of exposure to BITNET vary from user to user and from discipline to discipline. The key to maximizing these benefits is education and training. Handing someone a userid and a copy of BITNET USERHELP is a nice idea, but it hardly matches the payback of sitting people at terminals and saying, "Do it." Watch them receive mail and send messages to each other. The concepts come to life before their eyes. Suddenly, the network isn't a burden, but a tool to be used. It can even be fun. When they understand this, give them real examples of how they can get the most out of the network. If you are training a psychology class, give them information on the Psychnet magazine and server. If you are teaching Communications majors, show them COMSERVE and CRTNET. Then let them explore and find other services and topics to thrill and amaze them. The value of BITNET isn't just in the information and services that these students receive today. It is in the understanding and abilities they will take with them when they are no longer part of this network. Virtually, Chris Condon@YALEVM