Feb 22 2009
Just Enough To Create More Work
Ken has a story about streamlining processes (we call that operations):
Last year, we used a scoring template built by a math teacher at one of the participating schools (a GREAT GUY!) which required sorting to find the individual and teams scores after. Being a bit of a “Spreadsheet Jockey” (dubbed so by a former coworker) I resolved to streamline the process for this year, so that the results would be automatically calculated for both team and individual scores. And between last year and this year, I did so and emailed the spreadsheet to the GREAT GUY!
I have more than a few of those, myself. Here’s one from when I was a grad student. I’ll limit this to the three major players in this story other than me: The two technologically-challenged (ahem) co-directors, and a character I’ll call Sally, who was sort of the secretary and payroll person for the program, and the computer guru (ahem). The relevant technology, by the way, was not Word or Excel, but dBase and Lotus 1-2-3 (for DOS — this dates from the pre-Windows era). dBase is a relational database management system, and otus 1-2-3, a spreadsheet. The relevant word processor was blue-screen Word Perfect.
All of the students at the end of each seven-week session (two per semester) took a placement exam on scantrons, and were graded by hand, then recorded by hand, then by Sally, the computer guru, the hand-graded, hand-recorded scores were cut — literally, with a paper cutter — then not pasted but taped in alphabetical order so our computer guru could type them into a Word Perfect table, then print them out.
Let’s sum up that process, shall we?
- Students take exam on scantrons.
- Scantrons are graded by hand (there’s an office on campus just for scanning them).
- Scores are recorded by hand on sheets, then given to computer guru.
- Computer guru cuts the sheets into narrow strips, one per student, then tapes them to sheets of paper in alphabetical order.
- Computer guru enters the data in a Word Perfect table.
- Computer guru prints out said tables so they can be put in a filing cabinet.
I first became aware of this process when, about a week into the session, I requested the exam scores for a few of my students because they did not belong in my class. The director, you see, told me they “weren’t done yet.” Obviously, they were done, because those scores are used to place students for the next session. The conversation went something like this.
“Of course, they’re done. The students were placed, weren’t they?”
“We use the originals to do that. Sally hasn’t finished the printouts yet.”
“Come again? Where are the originals?”
“Sally has them. You should get them in a few days.”
So I investigated, and discovered this incredibly inept process. So I went to the other co-director, the Queen of Cracker Jack Box Prize Education (“This is a pencil!”).
“This can be done far more quickly and efficiently, you know.”
“But we’ve always done it this way.”
That went nowhere. I went next door, to the other co-director, who said:
“But we’ve always done it this way.”
Let me explain what I was dealing with here. This is the man who instead of reading his email, would print every message out, then read the hard copies, and if he replied, he would type in anything he wanted to quote from the hard copy. Getting a nice, sharp picture now?
“Did you know there’s an office on campus just for scoring scantrons?”
“Is there? Yes, I think I knew. Do you think we should have them scanned there? Wouldn’t we have to wait on them?”
“You already have to wait on them, and you eliminate the chance of human error.”
“Yes, I guess. Can you take them over there?”
“Yes, easily.”
So that was something, or so I thought, until the other director came to me a day or two later and said,
“Sally’s upset with you.”
“Why?”
“You should have gone to her first.”
So I went to see Sally, and explained why the process was idiotic, and exactly how it could be fixed. To her credit, she wasn’t so much of a computer idiot that she didn’t jump on board, but she couldn’t do it, so I had to.
So I set it up myself, and showed it to the computer guru. If I’d had my druthers, I would have set it up in Paradox, but you had to program dBase then, and Sally couldn’t deal with that. So instead, I set it up in Lotus 1-2-3 (think Excel).
“The data aren’t sorted.”
“So?”
“They have to be in alphabetical order, so we have to enter everything all over again.”
“See where it says Sort here on top? Watch.”
I sorted the data for her.
“Oh, that’s cool!”
Of course, we didn’t have networked computers at the time (we could, of course, have entered the data in SPSS on the mainframe, but then, we would have to have gone to one of the printers on campus to print out the results), but we didn’t have that many students, so it didn’t take that long to enter the data, or it shouldn’t have. The following session, I wanted to see how Sally was doing with the process, so I went to her office.
I watched her look at the printout, then scroll up and down the screen to find the student’s name.
“Look.” I pressed CTRL-F, and the search box popped open. “Type the name, then the return key.”
“Oh, that’s cool!” she said, when the page jumped to the student’s row.
It wasn’t until the late 90s when Windows 95 came out that they finally stopped printing everything and storing it in filing cabinets and started storing data in a database, however. And yes, I set up that system, too. Sally wasn’t much more computer literate then than she had been in the 80s.
If you want it done right …
One response so far
Thanks for the link, Prof.
As for the rest of the story, I feel your pain. I started on Lotus, limped through Quattro and Quattro Pro, and finally into Excel. And at every stage of the game, had to explain what I was doing to the computer-phobes.
To this day, even though I am pretty well-versed in VBA, I still have a small soft spot for the old, true macros in Lotus. I had fun and did some pretty amazing things with them.