Computer skills needed for college

[Anonymous]

What basic computer knowledge or skills should kids know before starting college? Beyond Canva, video games and social media.
Things like Word, Microsoft 365, Google docs and PDFs, Excel etc. also file and media management. I think my kid knows them a little, but not proficient.

I would love any online course recommendations to take over the summer. I figure having a strong base will help in school and with internships

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Knowing how the computer's file system works and how to find downloaded files from the file manager

[Anonymous]

Unlike high school most colleges will use Microsoft based products. So kid should be somewhat proficient with MS product suite.

If they take statistics they may be exposed to software such as SAS, SPSS, and Stata, but these will be school specific.

[Anonymous]

Someone with the basic intelligence required for college can read the Help page and doesn't need a course in basic consumer software.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unlike high school most colleges will use Microsoft based products. So kid should be somewhat proficient with MS product suite.

Not sure this is true—lots of schools use Google Docs, eg locally Georgetown and UMD. I find schools using Google super-frustrating as a professional school prof when students arrive with no clue how to use Word, Excel, etc., and do their assignments in Google but then just “save” as a doc/xls, which throws off formatting, etc. Then complain that they got docked for going over page limit when their Google doc didn’t. Google just lacks a lot of important features that my students will need in the profession, starting with their summer internships.

Anyway, find out FIRST which programs school will use, then look at skills training. From my experience, here’s where I see many students needing training: knowing how to format away from defaults (like extra spacing between paragraphs, changing tabs), change margins/orientation, insert breaks, insert page numbers, write an appropriate-length paragraph with topic sentence, set up a Zoom meeting, send a calendar invite, write an email to prof/admin/employer (esp greeting, intro topic sentence, and appropriate closing), use a simple formula in spreadsheet to add/average/etc, fill in a fillable pdf, know best practices for saving different versions, keep a calendar that doesn’t just rely on Canvas/Blackboard for deadlines (!!), read a syllabus and check it before asking prof how long is exam/where is office, and make document accessible in terms of fonts, etc. Most students also could use pointers on taking effective notes—so many students just try to transcribe lectures, but SO many studies show that this impairs student understanding and retention compared to restating content in own words or esp hand-writing (in days when cursive was still taught, at least, because students had to process content to take notes, simply as a function of speed). Students who transcribed did worse on tests even given opportunity to study from notes.

[Anonymous]

I think they are really intuitive with this. I wouldn't be sweating it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Knowing how the computer's file system works and how to find downloaded files from the file manager

This is an outstanding one (and something I should work with DS before he goes).