Teaching tech skills to others

I'm a computer networking major. IT is in my blood, it's what I do.

What is IT?
Information Technology

INFORMATION, not Information sharing

A lot of professionals I've worked with and studied under seem to have this perception. This idea that teaching end users anything is something beneath them. There exists an acronym for particularly error producing users, PEBCAC: problem exists between computer and chair

Is it better to give a poor man a fish so he can eat that night, or to teach him to fish that he might eat every night? While some users might not be open to learning new things, if someone asks me how I fixed a problem, then I'm happy to explain. There seems to be an overblown sense of pride among some IT people; if they don't understand how we fix their problems, then it makes us seem all the more important

Such thinking isn't very productive. Now I'm all for taking pride in your work, and I don't really think it's prudent to explain to a user something like grid computing, or any far our concept like that, but if they ask you why they're getting a message saying they're running low on virtual memory, would it be such a terrible thing to tell them they're running too many applications at once?

No one wants to deal with someone like that, someone who refuses to teach just creates an unpleasant work environment for everyone. IT certainly isn't the only field that suffers from people like this, it's everywhere. The biggest example that comes to mind is the medical field. Several family members of mine are involved in medicine, many of them are nurses. Many of the doctors they work with like to keep them on a tight leash as they're "only nurses" and must not know very much about medicine

So to the IT people out there reading this, do me a favor, and if someone asks for a little knowledge, hook them up

During my work at the IT center for the VA hospital (which is staffed mostly with army vets, older folk) I would respond to problems that people submitted via a ticketing system. I would find this persons desk or office, and would take care of whatever problem they had, or if I could not, I'd direct them to who could fix their problem

When I would find the person, I'd go through a little friendly chit chat, a lot of times if there was a serious problem it was pretty obvious that the user was nervous that they had messed something up; bringing it down to a more casual level helps to calm the person down a bit, and a little networking never hurts

I would then take a look at the computer and try to find the problem, if the user would watch me work then I would try to explain to them the basics of what I was doing, which directory I was going into (outdated drivers were a huge problem, think 60% of most tickets) or why I was using a specific command like msconfig. Then upon finding the problem, I'd let the user know what had happened and would tell them whether or not it was a quick fix. All in all I did the best I could to create a friendly, passive environment for the user. Also of course if asked any questions I'd do my best to answer them

So an overview of some tips to keep in mind when helping others:

• create a friendly environment
• use connections to what a user knows and understands
• appear confidant, but not arrogant
• avoid saying things like "oh this is a simple problem", be courteous
• try not to go into unnecessary extreme detail
• if a user doesn't want to learn, don't force them
• above all else, treat them with the respect they deserve (that can vary)
  

Problem solved, a new friend made, and everyone gets back to working. Efficient and rewarding. So next time your Mom asks you how to download an attachment or your Dad asks you what [i][/i] means around a word, remember, what's common knowledge to you might not be to them

Remember; "To teach, is to learn twice"