I had an idea that we could help set up some University projects for students. My thinking was that students could develop Excel calculations for the Repository and submit the work as part of their course. The work could be developed in the forum to allow other ExcelCalcs users to contribute offering the student the support of an 'expert' community.
Engineering students could develop design guides, mathematics students could develop libraries of calculations or students develop resources for their university course. I not sure of the best way to go about this but I would welcome your comments to help develop this idea.
Thanks.
John

Sounds like a good idea to me - I would be happy to support some students projects through the forum.

I agree with BillyNoMates sounds like a good idea. But there are some issues to consider.

At university and schools, problems are presented to either learn how to use excel, or learn how to solve problems. So whilst Excel may be included in a course of study certain problems change from one year to the next, in an attempt to at least ensure the students are doing the work. There are other areas where excel is not part of the study programme but students are permitted to use or otherwise restricted from using computers, or required to use other software.

Some 16 years back, Lotus 123 was used at the uni I attended, many students considered Excel the better program, I considered Quattro Pro better. At the uni we used Lotus, for our assignments we used what ever we had access to. Linear programming assignments were meant to be done using LINDO, but Quattro Pro was easier and faster to use. So most of the work was done using QPRO with LINDO input/output just being submitted to show can use that too.

This forms part of the basis for my queries about the basis of the repository and Excel calc's. Simple text book stuff, students should have been doing whilst studying, tutorial work, assignments, laboratory work, major project assignments. A multitude of students all doing the same thing at the same time. With the need to control last years work being passed on and around this years students.

So students should have a multitude of workbooks they could submit to the repository, on the other hand, who would be looking for such workbooks. Certainly not those who understand how to create, and how to use.

Computers in education depend on the point of the course. Not only did I do my linear programming assignments in QPRO, I wrote a turbo Pascal program to generate the data file for input to LINDO, so that a properly scaled system could be presented (It took an hour to travel to uni on weekend - I wasn't impressed when LINDO rejected my problem.). Everyone in my class used the program, and had an input file stating how it was generated. The point of the course was to formulate the linear program and understand the solution, not use LINDO. LINDO simply provided the means of solving a substantial and practical problem in a reasonable timeframe, compared to the problems we solved manually. (And because of the development of spreadsheets LINDO was diminishing in importance.)

The same goes for other situations at uni where MathCAD, MatLAB and Excel are used. Sometimes it is important for students to build the workbook, other times the important task is using the workbook and understanding solutions.

Now a repository that every student knows about, really could cause some problems finding new problems to give the students.

Then again, to build the respository, need contributions, so each student could be given an entirely different problem to solve. And ratings from members of the forum, may be used to grade the students efforts. And one day the education system is really going to have to change its ideas any way. (After all science is about acquiring understanding, not agreeing with the examiners the "Earth is flat and at the centre of the universe", or what ever they believe this year. Getting a degree maybe about passing exam's and upper most in a pupils mind. But such has little to do with being a student of a subject and learning and developing understanding.)

There are all kinds of tools available, that simplify solving technical problems. Technology students are meant to learn how to exploit such technologies. Education actually hinders this process, and obstructs technology development.

So yes, getting involved with the universities, technical colleges and schools could be beneficial. The problems of computers in education, and learning could be further discussed in the forum, specific to a given problem solving task. Could become highly educational.

Like some of the requests for workbooks could do with some discussion of the topics involved. Rather than simply providing to those requesting. Like if they are really in need of such, then they would put some effort into making a start. But may be they don't make a start because it is a new area of practice, they haven't yet put any real effort into learning and understanding. Just looking for a tool to plug some numbers into to satisfy some regulating authority.

And it is people looking for such tools which creates a reluctance for persons to contribute workbooks.

So education is the way to go.