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Re: [sdpd] Encouragements (student numbers & Crysfire)
Dear Armel
> 12 in 1999-2000; 6 in 2000-2001, and 3 in 2001-2002.
...
> this is hard work (CRYSFIRE handling seems to discourage some people)
These small numbers surprised me, since for the last 2 years people on
your SDPD course seem to contribute more than half of the emails that I
receive urgently requesting Crysfire support!
Usually the underlying problem is that they seem to have used their
computers only for running a word processor and surfing the Web, and are
confused over basic concepts such as directories and paths, and the
distinctions between an operating system and user programs, local files
and networked resources, etc.
The students might be expected to be self-selected for computer literacy,
since they've chosen to enrol for a technical course delivered via
computing technology, but in practice I'm not so sure.
Since these are the ones who actually enrolled, perhaps more have been
deterred by doubts about their fluency with computers - if so, this may
be something that you can address.
I hope these comments are helpful.
As far as Crysfire itself is concerned, the delayed release of Crysfire
2001 should occur within weeks, now that I'm re-emerging from the dark
tunnel of teaching core statistics and computing courses to 200+
psychology students, which occupies most of my waking hours between
September and April (just finishing their exam marking now!).
This should particularly help your SDPD students, since, although it
will superficially look similar, much of the system has actually been
rewritten.
The new release should hopefully be better at steering naive users away
from computational problems, as well taking care of some specific issues
such as the need for particular operating-system facilities (e.g. SORT)
that are missing from Windows/NT.
Watch this space!
Robin Shirley
------------------------------------
To: sdpd...@yahoogroups.com
From: Armel Le Bail <armel...@fluo.univ-lemans.fr>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 10:30:59 +0200
Subject: [sdpd] Encouragements
Reply-to: sdpd...@yahoogroups.com
Hello,
This is an email for encouraging those students engaged in the
SDPD Internet Course, and who are sleeping a bit at sessions
2, 3, or 4. Yes I know, this is hard work (CRYSFIRE handling
seems to discourage some people) and requires ~10 hours
per week. But the success needs some perseverance. A new
comment from a student just finishing session 8 was added at the
Course Web page :
http://www.cristal.org/course/comments.html
"- Thank you very much. This is the result of what I say to my
students they should do: "fazer com gosto" (making things, enjoying
them!). I think that this is half the way to the success... And in this
case it is very easy to enjoy what you are doing because the course is
very well thought and made. It seems to me a little bit like a rally paper...
So most of this week's calculations were done this weekend, while I was
taking care of the daffodils in the garden." (H.B.)
Well, thanks, this highly favorable comment may be due to the 20/20
note returned. However, it proves possible to continue up to the end. The last
sessions 9 and 10 are easier - they concern "only" the Rietveld method.
End of advertisement ;-)
Best,
Armel
PS - If the number of SDPDs per year continues to grow slowly, the
number of SDPD Internet Course subscribers decreases
dramatically : 12 in 1999-2000; 6 in 2000-2001, and 3 in 2001-2002.
Previsions for 2002-2003 are thus 1.5.....;-).
I still don't know the number of subscribers to the Birkbeck College
Powder Diffraction Internet Course ?
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