1. Do you teach computer skills explicitly or do students learn skills as they go along?
When we work on developing a problem we include what we are looking for in the technology area. This particular problem lent itself to databases, spreadsheets, some word processing, and some graphics. There were several aspects of the computer lab that we built into the restaurant problem. That's not to say that students hadn't had some exposure at some point in the classroom with word processing, with working with graphics, [or] working with databases. But for those folks who did not feel totally skilled in that area when they came to that portion of the project, we have both individual and group instruction. And if they had no idea where to begin, then they were instructed on that. And the next time we have a project that they need some sort of a database for they will have that skill already in place and can build on it from that level. We include a lot of emphasis on job and life skills. Many people want to work on their resume. That in itself is not such a big task. You can buy a software program to fill in the blanks. But what you say on the resume becomes more important. When someone has worked on the restaurant problem and gone into the computer area, worked on data bases, and developed some sort of a spreadsheet, [then] the more comfortable they feel about it, [and] the more likely they are to add that to their resume.
