how to teach a novice?

[GaryR]

ok, so my wife knows almost nothing at all about Excel, but she wants to learn so that she can get into a job doing admin or something. she's used it like twice in her whole life. But everytime i try to sit down with her and start with even the basics, she gets frustrated at how much there is to it and how powerful it can get so fast, and i get frustrated because i never really know where to start and how in depth to get with anything with her cause i'm fairly advanced.

who knows a really good book or a really good *free* online class for people that have never used excel before? I tried the microsoft.com tutorials but she got frustrated at how slow they went over the parts that she did know... grrr...


thanks!

 

[Angelicus]

I believe everyone is trainable but as a trainer there are two kinds of person who I simply need to let it go - the type who cannot understand English or those who have difficulty typing on the keyboard (eg: they don't even know ABCs)

 

[Smitty]

My wife and I are in a funny position in that she's got a degree in math and my background is decidedly not in math. I do all of her Excel work for her, because she really doesn't use it enough to need to learn more, even though she is a highly technical PC user. Her specialty is in web design, which she has a dickens of a time teaching me (so now I'm working on learning ASP, which she doesn't know).

As far as teaching/training goes I generally do all of the Excel heavy lifting in our environment. My users are not technical and as sales people 95% of them have no need to learn Excel unless they're personally interested, so I build dummy-proof apps for them. Although we are moving to a remote workforce setup, so I will be putting together some classes for Office apps, now that our reps will be mostly working from home with little to no support.

My boss' biggest complaint about me is that when people come to me for SS help, I tend to just fix it for them instead of showing them how to do it, primarily because the questions are invariably the same. Need to work on that one I guess.

 

[Joe4]

As a trainer I should find all programs fascinating: I love excel to bits but Words alone cannot express as to how much I detest Microsoft Word

I am with you on that one! As I always say, "Word is the Devil!"

 

[RoryA]

My boss' biggest complaint about me is that when people come to me for SS help, I tend to just fix it for them instead of showing them how to do it, primarily because the questions are invariably the same. Need to work on that one I guess.

I always think that one is very much a question of 'horses for courses' (as my Nan always said). With some people I will take the time because I know they will listen and try and make use of the information (and it will often enable them to help others too, so I get left in peace a bit more often to do my actual work!); with others, I just know their eyes will glaze over the minute I start explaining, so I just fix it and move on.
And if that's your boss' biggest 'complaint' about you, you're probably due a pay rise!!

 

[SydneyGeek]

My boss' biggest complaint about me is that when people come to me for SS help, I tend to just fix it for them instead of showing them how to do it, primarily because the questions are invariably the same. Need to work on that one I guess.

It's hard to stop, too... if someone interrupts you with a question, it's often faster to just do it.

I am with you on that one! As I always say, "Word is the Devil!"

I use it when I have to. It's a powerful beast, but a beast nonetheless.

I believe everyone is trainable but as a trainer there are two kinds of person who I simply need to let it go - the type who cannot understand English or those who have difficulty typing on the keyboard (eg: they don't even know ABCs)

Yep! Once taught 10 people an advanced Access course. 3 had limited keyboard skills, 6 were not too hot on English. We didn't cover all that much.

Denis

 

[Cindy Ellis]

I'm a bit late to this discussion, but there is a method of learning that I didn't notice specifically mentioned above: learning from reading the online help and examples. It's not as easy to navigate now (I was doing this almost 20 years ago), but one benefit of learning from help was that I got a sense of how the programmers who wrote Excel thought it might be used. You can also get a sense for the capabilities of the program, so when you have a problem to solve, you start off thinking that it's possible rather than impossible.
As for the "Word" naysayers ...make it serve you (rather than the other way around) and it will become an essential and valuable tool in your toolbox. I use a combination of Word and Excel, and use Word macros to manipulate documents almost as often as I use Excel macros.
Cindy

 

[Angelicus]

My wife and I are in a funny position in that she's got a degree in math and my background is decidedly not in math. I do all of her Excel work for her, because she really doesn't use it enough to need to learn more, even though she is a highly technical PC user.

My guy is a Post-Doctorate in Physics, he has a very competent set of computing skill (higher than me in general), yet when it comes to Microsoft Office suite, he need to give a pass and often refer to me for help.

However, I hate maths (even though my undergrad degree was in Economics), so for complex maths, I refer him to set up the model then I run it on Excel.

 

[Angelicus]

Yep! Once taught 10 people an advanced Access course. 3 had limited keyboard skills, 6 were not too hot on English. We didn't cover all that much.

Denis

Advance Access course without even keyboard skill? I hope that time you do not need to report to anyone - here in Hong Kong, trainers are under stringent evaluation. I generally discovered that those users who with the most limited fundamental skills tend to give the worst evaluation.

 

[Angelicus]

As for the "Word" naysayers ...make it serve you (rather than the other way around) and it will become an essential and valuable tool in your toolbox. I use a combination of Word and Excel, and use Word macros to manipulate documents almost as often as I use Excel macros.
Cindy

I need to learn Excel & Access to increase efficiency, I need to learn Word just to make sure things work out! XD

 

[SydneyGeek]

Advance Access course without even keyboard skill? I hope that time you do not need to report to anyone - here in Hong Kong, trainers are under stringent evaluation. I generally discovered that those users who with the most limited fundamental skills tend to give the worst evaluation.

Same here. This lot had been made redundant so they had been given a training package as part of the severance pay. They could (and did) sit any course they liked over 12 months. There were some real no-hopers.

I always make sure to note in my report, the ones who should not have been there.

Deniis