Directory structures is the ‘skill’ I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints about students not understanding. Particularly annoying for those teaching first year undergrad SWEng, since the gap between those self starters who have some idea of what’s going on and those who don’t really care and we’re pressured into it by parents is larger than ever.

It’s pretty unfair on those who have done the bare minimum amount of experience with computers that they have to sit through (and pay for!) being taught ‘this is what a file structure is and how it works’ for a not-trivial amount of time.

Tell the university that they need to add a computer course to the required incoming freshman classes. Things like how to use the various systems the university supports. This was my experience at CSU, and very little of it was explained to me, other than a few quick mentions in the 1-hour library course (this is how you do this and that and the other thing on library systems. The school offers Citrix and access to network drive away from school. Ask someone about that if you care. This is how you access online periodicals.)

- Eduroam is available at many other schools if you happen to be there, but I never managed to actually sign in, because CSU never told me how, neither did UCLA when I visited - how to access the network drive, both on- and off- campus (sftp supported without a VPN, smb with). This was mentioned in a single 1 hour lecture at the library on how to use library systems. Access from the locked down public computers at the library without student logins was not mentioned (just mounting a network drive, but instructions previously given implied that the VPN was necessary if you weren't logged into your account on the network) - there were labs running windows 10, windows 7/8 (windows 10 came out while I was there), Fedora (network drive had to be connected manually), and even a lab full of Sparcs that I didn't use much (they were quite slow), the library computers, etc. There were also heavily locked down public computers in other areas that only allowed access to the browser, and a lab full of thin clients that offered no permanent storage for even temporary use (working with a local file? Better have a flash drive, or you're stuck with network drive latency) - Citrix allowed access to a suite of software including Adobe CS6 iirc as well as Office and other software; this worked from anywhere on-campus, but the software offering off-campus was different. This got a passing mention in the library lecture, mainly that this is available. Classes that actually made use of this software didn't mention it being available off campus at all. - some software was only available in private labs (acceptable not to mention this), but some was only available in certain buildings/departments and some was only available on Citrix. Fonts could not be installed anywhere, but windows offers a simple (if little-known) method to register a font for the current session, and this worked for using custom fonts in Adobe and other applications, both in Citrix and on lab computers. - there was a single cafe where students were _allowed_ (I think?) to plug laptops into the network (not to say people didn't do it elsewhere, but here the network and plug sockets were above the counter in the public seating area, and nobody would stop you from doing so) - part way through, I think there was a new network drive added, for a while there were multiple ways to access the network drive. - the network drive was (a very little bit) more than just a network drive; it allowed ssh access to edit files with pico; when I first started, it also hosted files for student websites; eventually the websites went away, but the ssh access never did. It was clearly an intentionally open SSH server, and was open outside the school as well; it had a (iirc pre-login) banner with some rules. - msdnaa was retired in favor of dreamspark, and free copies of office were phased out in favor of discounted 365 subscriptions when I was about halfway through. There was still tons of free software available, and none of it was ever mentioned until a cs course (the cs department had their own dreamspark subscription with an expanded offering, but there was software available to everyone as well, including Windows and office...which was available separately in the school/CS/business subscriptions)

When I was in high school (middle school?), I had a computer literacy class where a good quarter of the semester was teaching students how to organize their files. The teacher had a messy filesystem that was unzipped onto each computer, and during the course of a week or so, students were expected to rename files and the few directories and organize the files in a way that made sense. Mostly the files were empty iirc, but I think there were a few with similar names and identical content that could be deleted. I remember thinking at the time that this was the best thing I'd ever seen, having anyway seen the number of files left saved on desktop and my documents on the few machines at the school that allowed you to do so.