Guidelines for Educators?

[johnsold]

While responding to this thread, it occurred to me that it appears that many instructors (apparently mostly in colleges and universities) are teaching LV without knowing much about it. This does not apply to people teaching NI courses.

One of the requirements in the student's first assignment was to use the Abort button to stop the VI.  As Ed Pickens said, it works but may have unintended consequences.

We see disporportionally far more posts by students asking for help with homework than we do from instructors seeking assurance that they are teaching sound principles and best practices.

My question is this: Is there some way we (the experienced programmers who participate in the Forums and NI, of course) can provide guidance and assistance to those instructors?  They apparently do not utilize the resources on the Academic pages of the NI Web Site.

How would we reach them and steer them appropriately?

Lynn

[GuenterMueller]

I don't know how to handle this, either.
In the past I have always encouraged LabVIEW beginners to have a look and participate in this LabVIEW forum.  I did not miss having a look at the forum page and at the same time pointed out, that the LabVIEW forum is the most(!) active one.  I am (to a small degree) disappointed that I never got the feedback that this has been a good advice.
The localised version of LabVIEW is frequently used in Germany.  As a result, LabVIEW beginners are struggling with the LabVIEW terms that are used in this forum. So they tend to not participate ...  Congrats to every not-native english speaker who breaks this rule.

[TiTou]

Interesting, 2 years ago I a started teaching some LabVIEW at university. I don't do the basics, other teachers from the uni deal with this, of course they are not expert they have limited knowledge, most of them are aware of their lack of proficiency but they do their best with humility and then pass it to me do do hands-on with hardware.

From what the teachers told me (I didn't check) NI folks in France haven't put much effort into training and supporting the teachers, once the hardware and the site licence was sold to the uni the support was quite minimal.

To answer the original question, I don't know how to help them (the teachers), but NI's website dedicated to help them dosn't look too bad, it would be interesting to know if they actually use it.

Anyway if anyone as any recommendation on how to help the teachers improve the basic training they give to the students, I'm listening!

For my part, the first thing I do before the starting the hands-on is a conference-like lecture that takes about 3h to try to give the students a correct image of what LabVIEW is ; what I've noticed is that they often just don't have a clear idea of what LabVIEW is good at, so before starting using it with them I focus on telling them what this "tool" is all about.

Localized versions are a nightmare for support but apparently it really helps NI reaching new customers... (see Arsitos Q's comment here)

I have considered giving my conf + hands-on to the - french - students in english, I've talked about it with the teachers, not sure they will let me do it, but I surely won't give up the idea.

[LV_Pro]

Maybe gently suggesting to the student who posts with a "use the abort button" type directive, to have their instructor visit these pages. I know that in many academic settings the students are reluctant to challenge the authority of the instructor (I was "lucky" in returning to University as a "non-traditional" student, meaning, here in the US, that I was older than many of the professors and not intimidated by most), but it would be good if we had a means to adjust the path the students are taking on a group basis rather than individually. Then again, there are those that may think their skill/knowledge level higher than it is.  I do remember an early forum poster who stylized himself as LV_Guru. I, 15 years ago, had my email address as lv_guru2, suffering a bit of hubris myself. I was dropped down a notch when my then 12 year old daughter, quite familiar with LabVIEW (she dabbled, briefly with v3.0) asked me if my email address was LabVIEW guru or Love guru. Dropped that email with 30 minutes of the question.

[altenbach]

Granted that I am not sure about this particular case because of lack of detailed information. Does the instructor really talk about the abort button in the tool bar?Could it be the that the students got a VI template containing a stop button labeled "Abort" already placed on the diagram?

[johnsold]

The information posted was not clear on that point.  A later comment by the OP suggested a "sink or swim" approach by the instructor and that led me to believe that he was talking about the toolbar Abort button.

Lynn

[GuenterMueller]

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@johnsold wrote:

The information posted was not clear on that point.  A later comment by the OP suggested a "sink or swim" approach by the instructor and that led me to believe that he was talking about the toolbar Abort button.

Lynn

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Same with me.   Should be forbidden to mention he term "abort" in conjunction with front panels if a stop button is expected.