Why Professors Drink 2012.04.12

I typically assign my students an individual project that is due towards the end of the semester. For this semester that will be next week. A few early submissions have begun to trickle in. If the one below is any example, it's going to be a long, looonnng grading process.

This particular project was submitted by a 'non-traditional' (read: older) student. I usually have a few in my class, but this one, however, is apparently older than most.

Being born in the 19th century makes it a little bit harder to understand the constant growth of technology and how it is used to gather information.

What I post here are usually the more extreme examples of student ineptitude. To be fair, however, there are many more instances of students who do a good job. They're just not as entertaining. Case in point:

In addition to the individual project, I also assign a group project. It involves the students going out into the community and working with a business or non-profit organization on some sort of technology implementation effort. In this specific case, a small group of students worked with a local charity that provides assistance to the families of veterans who have been wounded or killed while on active duty.

The charity collects donations from individuals and companies, sells it in a thrift shop, and uses the proceeds to buy food, clothes, school supplies, and the like for families in the program. As you can imagine, there is a lot of record-keeping involved, from simple banking activity to inventory management to enrollment records to IRS forms to ... well, you get the idea.

When the students first got involved, everything was paper based -- literally kept in shoe boxes and manilla folders. In a few short months a PC was acquired and installed, systems were developed and implemented, the charity's volunteers were trained, and all the data was transferred from paper to the PC. The man hours required to handle the record keeping, back office, and administrative chores have been reduced from around twenty hours per week to about five. Quality is up, errors are down, and frustration has been reduced. The volunteers are spending more time soliciting new donations and have expanded the hours the store is open. The funds generated to help the families have tripled since January. Not all of that is due to the new systems, of course, but they have helped. In addition, the students have worked to spread the word about the efforts of this charity, resulting in more volunteers and more corporate involvement.

So while at times I may poke a little fun at my students, or get exasperated with them, at others times I am very, very proud of them.

This is one of those times...