Cockeyed Optimist

Many users have limited competence

It became apparent, during this series of experiments, that for this population of users at least, the help systems provided in Microsoft Word and consequently (and more importantly) the capabilities of the word processor itself, were not being used to best advantage. There are several aspects of this shortfall:

Many of these students have, over a number of years, adopted a small sub-set of functions that are adequate for the production of the modest documents that are called for in their day-to-day life and studies. At school and the early years of University, their essays were acceptable with only minimal complexity of formatting: maybe a different font for headings, some use of italics, dot-points and so on, but little call for headers and footers, footnotes, inserted graphics or other more advanced features.

Since they can cope, for the most part, using just this personal sub-set, they have no great motivation to try anything more complex or useful, so that in some cases they are making more work for themselves. An example of this is the use of styles: on occasions, for instance when they insert headings, they will format each heading separately as it is encountered, instead of using the built-in predefined styles or defining their own.

For this reason, and a number of others, it is common for people in this group to be reluctant to seek help from the help facilities provided in Word.

This reluctance may be due to:

a feeling that they are doing fine without help, have no need of it, for the reasons noted above
the attitude (especially among some males) that it is weak, or not cool, to seek help (“help is for wimps”)

a feeling that it is much easier, and more direct, to ask a friend, or appeal to a whole group how to do something (this can be expressed as asking for a reminder about something they already know, thus saving face)

a preference for browsing through menu items to find one that looks useful (this can actually be an excellent learning strategy, encouraged by a well designed user interface)

the prejudiced opinion that the help provided is hard to obtain and may not be very useful even when it is found

previous bad experiences in seeking help unsuccessfully

previous experiences of successful searches for help which took a long time or needed a lot of effort

annoyance at the unwanted presence of the Office Assistant (and not knowing that it can easily be disabled

similar annoyance at “Tips of the Day” that can be seen as well-meaning but pointless delays to starting work, with little immediate relevance

adverse attitudes developed as a result of system behaviour seen as intrusive (such as “It looks like you’re typing a letter …”, or automatic spelling corrections)

simple fear of the unknown, a preference for staying on familiar ground rather than venturing into a side-track with unpredictable outcomes.

Training as a remedy for limited competence

Training may be an effective approach to minimising these shortfalls, but it is less often provided nowadays. When personal computers were still seen as novelties it was thought reasonable, in the office, at school, and for home users, that training should be made available, recommended or even required. This training might have been in the form of classroom sessions, or audio-visual aids (audiotapes, videos or slide shows), either standing alone or supplied on the computer itself, or in written form: tutorial manuals or quick-reference cards.

The distinction between these forms of training and the on-line help systems being discussed in this thesis is essentially that training is done before the event, preceding the substantive use of the word processor or other application. It is still possible to have training, of course, but for reasons of time, cost (or the impatience of the users themselves) it is becoming increasingly the case that users are ‘thrown into the deep end’ and left to sink or swim. Given time, as the experimental participants in these studies have shown, most of them can indeed learn to swim, but often with a limited repertoire of strokes and a great deal of splashing.

What this research shows is that maybe, for students anyway, there is still a case for providing training; that the quality of the student experience and the effectiveness of their studies might be enhanced by requiring those who might benefit from it to go through some sort of training experience. Less prescriptively, short courses could be offered by, say, the library or by the student support services; students, in particular, might feel better disposed to these than if they were provided by teaching departments.

Judging by what students said at focus groups, reported in the on-line survey and demonstrated by their performance on the experimental exercises, the following topics might well be included in an introductory training programme:

A brief guide to the uses of the built-in paragraph styles supplied with Word, principally for setting out documents with a hierarchy of headings

Ways, with examples, of creating custom paragraph styles to suit the user’s personal taste or particular requirements

Notes on common ‘bad practices’, such as:

using blank lines to separate paragraphs or to move to a new page

using spaces or tabs to line up text items (to give the effectof tables) or to centre headings

Guidance on achieving the intended outcomes of these poorpractices in ‘legitimate’ ways

A brief guide to the use of headers and footers, including page numbering

A brief introduction to simple tables and their manipulation and formatting

Precautions to take so that files created are easy to find, and well organised in folders.

Such a program would enable students, in particular, to produce satisfactory essays and other assignments, and would give them a sound basis for later elaborations, when and as called for in their developing study careers. It would also be a good start for other beginners at word processing.

In parallel (or instead), it might be worthwhile for the quality of word-processing output—the final appearance of assignments, essays or reports—to be taken into account when student work is marked (for example, by allocating a stated proportion of the final mark to presentation), thus providing an incentive for individuals to lift their word-processing game (this does happen at present, but only sporadically).  

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