As a side note - when I go to the archives
(
http://chemnmr.colorado.edu/ammrl/archives/) and type the word competency or
the phrase "user competency" into the search engine (Search the Colorado AMMRL
website (Including E-Mail Archives) this thread does NOT show up?!?
Is it something I'm doing wrong? or maybe it's a continuation of the
wikipedia/forum format issue . . . how to best organize and access archival
information.
---------------------
Does anyone use moodle? That's the only program I'm familiar with that creates
forums. It's intended as a teaching tool (I use it for my NMR class), so it
would probably work, but NOT be ideally suited to the task.
Kol tuv,
Yael
Quoting "William C. Stevens" <wstevens_at_siu.edu>:
> Dear Colleagues:
>
> I have created problems for myself with regard to the competency
> level of my user base and I would like your reflections and suggestions.
>
> One mistake I made was backing off on what I required my users to
> endure in terms of training from me. I used to insist that they at
> least understand the arm-waving vector explanation of
> inversion-recovery before they were allowed to practice on the
> instruments and get passwords. Neither the users nor their professors
> appreciated this and I felt like I was expending a lot of effort
> teaching this material and getting no positive reinforcement in
> return, so I relaxed my standards.
>
> Then I got a decent graduate assistant and I turned over to him a lot
> of the training load, and he was even less demanding than me.
> Competency declined further.
>
> Now, I have VNMRJ and PFGs, which allows users with no competency
> whatsoever to obtain decent NMR data. The consequence I find evermore
> vexing is that my users are getting progressively more incompetent,
> not even taking care to use the walkup "no-brainer" interface
> correctly. They cannot be troubled even to make sure the solvent is
> set correctly.
>
> First the faculty encouraged me to be lazy about what I required NMR
> users to know. Then the software encouraged me to be lazy. Now,
> formerly competent users are shifting their brains into neutral upon
> entering the NMR lab and are causing problems that they wouldn't have
> caused if they had been here 15 years ago.
>
> My job is beginning to feel an awful lot like that of the Wal-Mart
> Associate who monitors the automated check-out stations and runs
> frantically to assist every bonehead customer who gets into trouble.
> I think I am working more instead of less and, even worse, I'm
> feeling separated from my previous level of understanding of what the
> software is making the instrument do.
>
> Yesterday, a user needed a 1-D nOe. Instead of poring over the VJ
> manuals to figure it out, I fired up the 6.1C emulation instead and
> got him a result. I'm not saying VJ is bad, but I think I'm seeing
> user-friendly produce user-stupid, and maybe director-stupid as well.
>
> Bill
>
> William C. Stevens, Ph.D. Director
> Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility
> Southern Illinois University
> Carbondale, IL 62901
> 618-453-6498 voice / -6408 fax / 521-9892 cell
> http://opie.nmr.siu.edu
>
--
Yael S. Balazs, Ph.D. http://www.technion.ac.il/~balazs
NMR Facility Manager phone: +972-4-829-3748
Faculty of Chemistry fax: +972-4-829-5703
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology email: balazs_at_tx.technion.ac.il
Haifa, Israel 32000
Received on Mon Apr 10 2006 - 11:33:20 MST