Excel is one of the standard computer programs that every educated person
should be able to use. In my opinion, you do your students no service if
you seek a "simpler" program. In my experience, they acquire Excel skills
quite quickly.
You may want to talk to your Information Systems support people about
having them provide an auxiliary training session for those students who
are not already familiar with the program. Also, many schools have courses
in which Excel, Word, and a few other essential pieces of software are
taught. Perhaps such a course should be a prerequisite.
Now, I have a colleague who firmly believes that computers are too
difficult for students to use until they are juniors or seniors. I on the
other hand have expected my incoming bio freshman students to build Excel
spreadsheets of Lotka-Volterra systems outside of class, and in another
situation I designed and taught a lab in which students built Excel
spreadsheets to analyze some of the basic population growth models. Some
students handle it easily, others needed to take a lot more time. But isn't
that how all of life is?
At 04:34 PM 10/4/00 +0100, Jon Monroe wrote:
>Hi all,
>>In undergraduate labs we often want students to collect, analyze and think
>about data. In reality they often spend a lot of time just figuring out
>how to use the software (e.g. Excel is powerful but there is a steep
>learning curve).
>>Can anyone recommend a software package with spreadsheet, statistics and
>graphing capabilities that is easy to learn and use in an undergraduate
>laboratory setting? I'll post the responses.
>>Thanks.
>>Jon
>>--------------------------------------------------------
> Jonathan D. Monroe Associate Professor
> Department of Biology, MSC 7801 office: 540-568-6649
> James Madison University fax: 540-568-3333
> Harrisonburg, VA 22807 email: monroejd at jmu.edu>http://csm.jmu.edu/biology/monroejd/jmonroe.html>--------------------------------------------------------
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