Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Orientation

It's orientation here at Siena, with a couple of hundred students showing up to learn about what they need to learn to start learning.

It's a busy two weeks for I&TS. We give training sessions to each group -- three a day for a half hour each.  Now, a half hour is hardly enough time to learn how everything works, and, coupled with all the other information that students are absorbing these two days, we don't really expect people to remember everything. It really only boils down to three pieces of information:  their username, their password, and our website (http://www.siena.edu/technology).

And even that may be too much.  I got an email -- originally sent to another department of the college -- that a student couldn't log on to the system.  He had gotten his password wrong (this despite having to use it at least twice during the class), and evidently forgot the way it is created (despite the fact that it's mentioned many times). He didn't even go to the website (http://www.siena.edu/technology) to see if the answer is there, nor did he evidently check the handout that explains how the password was created.

<sigh>

Luckily, most students do better than this.