Students

Today was the first night of one of the classes I teach. It never ceases to amaze me how people can get through life and no nothing about how to follow directions.

Tonight was the Keyboarding class - which is mainly self-taught through a web classroom. I just sit in front of the class to help them with problems. And believe me, there are a lot!

I instructed the students to read the text first, it will tell them when to go to the computer and complete the exercises, and then the computer screen will tell them when to go back to the text. I had one student who misunderstood. She skipped the first section in the text - thought it was just telling her how to log in, and went to the computer. She completed the first exercise and put up her hand. "I thought it was going to tell me when to go to the next section." I just finished Section 2.1 and it didn't tell me to go to Section 2.2. I opened the text and pointed to the first paragraph of the section - where it told her to log in and begin Section 2.1, and lo and behold, a few sentences down it said continue on to Section 2.2 through 2.5. I had to actually point to it. She just didn't see it.

This isn't unusual. I've had students in my online class who were supposed to go to the Testing Center to take finals, call me the day after the marking period ended to ask me if there was supposed to be a final. I have at least 4 students every semester that "miss" the final. They didn't understand. It's only discussed in the Orientation, listed on the Syllabus, listed in their Class Schedule, AND I send everyone an e-mail when I deliver the tests to the Testing Center. I can see how they miss it.

What is the most remarkable is that most of my students are not "traditional-aged" students. Mine are, for the most part, adults.

How did they make it this far in life?