Would you replace a unit in Business Computer Systems course that teaches Database/Acess with Power Point?

I use both Access and Powerpoint. Access is used to analyze data and to make reports. Powerpoint is used to make slides so you can give talks. You can’t do serious analysis with Powerpoint. You can’t make good presentations with Access.

The answer to your question has to do with what the students will most likely need. That depends on what they will do. If they will be in sales, then Powerpoint will be of more use. If they are going to be analyzing data, Access will be more useful.

As a data analyst, I think Access is much more important—and it is important to me. I use it much more than Powerpoint, but I use them both. There’s another factor, and that is learning curve. Access is far harder to learn than Powerpoint and that is because most people don’t know much about data.

Powerpoint is much easier to teach yourself. You can’t teach yourself Access unless you are the kind of person who reads the manual. So no matter what they plan to do, I would teach them Access on the principle that they should have a broad range of skills and this is a skill that if they ever need it, they will really wish they had been taught it.

I don’t know anyone who uses Access. Unless they need more specialized statistical software, everyone I know uses Excel for data analysis.

Maybe it would depend on how much time is devoted to each unit? If a unit is a day, maybe PowerPoint is a good idea – but cover things that aren’t easily discovered by oneself, like working with templates and such. It’s hard to imagine taking a full course in PowerPoint, because so much of it is self-explanatory. And yet, so many people make bad presentations… maybe teach him about avoiding bad fonts and bad colour schemes.

Like @wundayatta, I use both Access and PowerPoint. For me, however, I use PowerPoint “because I have to” from time to time, and I use Access because I love it. I do basic development in Access all the time; sometimes I bring work home to play with “just for fun”.

But you’ve known I was ‘different’ for a long time, so this should be no surprise.

PowerPoint has a place in business. Too prominent a place, if you ask me. And Excel, as great as it is as a data display tool (and occasional front end for databases) can’t hold a candle to the power of a relational database. Excel is sadly overused in places where Access (or some other relational database) is clearly a better tool.

Have I mentioned that I’m in the sciences? I just realized that you are talking about a business-specific course! Sorry, my comments may not be relevant. :(

@dappled_leaves Oh, yes. They’re relevant! It’s a HS course. We teach everything (science happens to be my favorite!)\

Thanks for your input, you guys.

@dappled_leaves Excel is really hard to work with for data analysis. It is really good at calculations, but as a database, it is so slow and clunky and almost impossible to manage.

My job requires that I know how to use all these things, plus many other kinds of data management software packages. I do mapping and statistical analysis and qualitative data analysis as well as database management and spreadsheets.

Most people who use Excel to manage data do so because they don’t know what a database really is and they don’t have the tools to manage data, anyway. People also use Excel for statistical analysis. If you can only teach one tool, then yes, teach Excel. And at the high school level, I think I’d rather see people learn to build a spreadsheet and build a database and do statistical analysis all using excel. At least they’d have exposure to the work.

But if high school kids could learn databases, they could use that as a real big leg up in getting into college. And if you’ve already had exposure to stats, an even bigger leg up. My undergraduate students usually only have Excel. For the minimal amount of stats they are required to use, I’m not going to tell them to learn something else. But if they get into stats, then they are going to learn SPSS or STATA or SAS. Maybe R. The interesting thing about R, now, is that there is a front end for it that uses Excel. That means if you have Excel, you can do the most powerful statistical techniques using the easy front end that Excel provides. Although I’m not sure where you do your data management.

I like SPSS to do data management as well as Access. SPSS makes it a lot easier to calculate new variables and recode things and whatnot. Access can do all that, but it’s clunkier.

But in the end, it’s finding the right tool for the job. The more tools you have, the better a job you’ll be able to do. I really think exposure to Access is the most valuable thing the kids could have. Powerpoint is so easy to pick up on your own. Access is what I’d want to see the kids learn. If someone shows up in my office and says they can use Access, that tells me instantly they can do a lot more than 90% of the people I see.

Access can be an easy intro to database design since the concepts are presented without the need to necessarily learn a related programming language.

If they’re also learning the programming, Visual Basic is an easy way to get an intro to those skills as well. The concepts from Access and the related programming transfer to any other programming those students will do in the future.

So Access could be seen as a gateway to two large skillsets that most people aren’t exposed to and never know if they have an interest in.

Powerpoint is a fairly simple program to pick up, it’s mostly drag and drop. Most people can figure it out without any training at all. I don’t want to minimize what a great presentation can do but learning the program alone will rarely make an engaging presentation.

The difference you’d make to students with a good intro to Access I feel would be a lot greater than the same time spent on PowerPoint where even an expert level of skill isn’t really very marketable.

I don’t know of anyone who’s ever been hired to make PowerPoint slides as a primary role, there are hundreds of thousands of programmers.

Right guys…I hear you @funkdaddy and @wundayatta. I hear and I…listen. I’m just weighing my student’s future against…their chances of anything. Well, anyway.

Hey! @wundayatta I made a primitive “database” with Excel for my 5 person office. I know what data bases are. I mean, I’ve used them before, but mostly pre-packaged. Have never created one myself, except to fill in the blanks (Quickbooks Pro, for my shop.) I really want to learn Access but I haven’t been able to find a free teaching program. Anyone know of one?

Anyway, I made a primitive database with Excell that utilizes hyperlinks and stuff. Works for our little office. I’m please with it.

@wundayatta Personally, I use Excel, R, and SigmaPlot, and I model in OOLs. For the basic stuff, Excel is nice because data entry is so easy – and I know where everything is and what its limitations are. I think for a lot of people, Excel is their go-to because it’s comfortable. If they’re working at a level where they realize they need something more serious, then they go find that thing and learn it. In the course @Dutchess_III is teaching, they’re also learning Word and Excel… so I’m guessing these are not advanced users.

I opened Access after reading this question for the first time in years, and found it very non-intuitive. What I am guessing from looking at the interface is that it’s used when you’re taking data from different sources and working with it all at once. Is that correct?

Also – I agree with @funkdaddy that VBL is an incredibly useful tool – and it’s available in one form or another within a lot of different packages, so it’s likely the student will be able to take advantage of it, wherever he lands.

@dappled_leaves “Not advanced users”...I had to ROFL! Most of the guys have never touched a computer before! I’m SO please with their progress, though. They’ve been clamoring to learn how to type, for one thing. (They listen to my…my keyboard…over at my desk and they say “I want to learn how to do that!) Anyway, it’s fulfilling. I just think for basic beginners, Power Point would be better. Plus…I know it. I don’t know Acess. I hate trying to teach something I don’t really know.

GailCalled here, calling @dappled_leaves…you read this question for the first time in years? But I just posted it! ...... sorry. couldn’t resist…:( :)

A data base means you can sort and search sixty-seven ways from Sunday, almost unlimited criteria. I’ve heard it’s just amazing…you incorporate Word, Excell and all kinds of stuff…. but…that was what a friend told me after several days of intensive training. I’ve had about 20 minutes of self training.

@Dutchess_III Ahaha! I had commas around “after reading this question”, then on the re-read took them out because I thought they looked clunky. But yes, they had a purpose didn’t they? :)

Yeah, I’m trying to think how I might need to organize my files containing data as a single “database”, but to be honest, I don’t feel it. Am I wrong in thinking there’s a kind of safety in having no connection between various files containing data? I would not want anything I do in one file to have any effect on any other file, for example. Just thinking out loud.

Now you’re talking kinda over my head. Maybe I’d need to hear specifically…work files, or personal files? What kind of files? Do you want to just link them so you can go from one to the other, or do you want to set them so that when you change info in one, it changes info in another?

Gailcalled here…perhaps, “After reading this question I opened Access for the first time in years.” I can’t tell you the dangling prepositions and participles and conjunctions and the whys and the wherefores…I just know that the order in which the words and mini-phrases appear in a sentence are important. GailCalled is gonna come in here and kick my ass for even attempting to impersonate her! Or worse, she’ll send Milo!

@funkdaddy‘s point about database skills is very important. In most businesses of any size there is a database. If you know something about them you can get a job.

Access has its limitations but can be a good intro to working with data. Access is also a good frontend builder, and can introduce one into the complexities of building an application.

@dappled_leaves There is no reason to complicate your system. If the files you have work for you, then they work for you. If they didn’t you’d be looking for a solution.

@Dutchess_III, My first thought, without knowing the details was to teach Access. Powerpoint is so easy once you know Word and Excel, it doesn’t really pose a challenge. However, the challenge with Powerpoint is knowing when to use it, how to select the right data to present, how to optimize the effectiveness of the presentation. So think about what the goals for learning Word and Excel really are, because those goals aren’t always to just take some other person’s work and massage it into a fit-for-public-consumption state. The same is true for Powerpoint and for Access.

I have always characterized the MS Office suite as a Pencil. As in “If you can’t do the work with a Pencil, Office doesn’t do much for you.” But oh, the power when you can do the work with a pencil and Office makes it so much easier, faster, prettier, etc!

So, while you may not know Access inside out, you may have more than adequate skill to guide your student to really try to learn on his own. This may be the course that tips the person into understanding how to learn on their own. Give them that chance, it’ll make their life choices so much more rewarding.

If you don’t know Access, then you can’t teach it.

It is not intuitive. I had years of experience with dbase3 when I first encountered Access. It was a totally different way of handling data and there were many simple things I couldn’t figure out how to get it to do until someone who knew it told me how to do it.

Also, if your students can’t type… it’s hard for me to imagine they are ready for Access.

Teach powerpoint.

Actually, @dappled_leaves, your data are generally much safer in Access or something like it. In Excel, which simply crashes far too often for my liking, your changed data are stored in RAM until you save the file. With Access, as soon as you leave a record it’s committed and stored in the database.

Excel has some nice features, and I enjoy playing with it, too. But its “database-like” features such as pivot tables, the ability to sort, to set data validation rules, to filter, etc. are toys compared to the ease and ability to do the same things in Access queries.

I have yet to see workable duplication catchers in Excel. With Access or any other reasonably well-designed database (when you want the feature active) you will simply not be able to enter duplicate records.

Access queries can have calculation built in so that users can’t accidentally overwrite formulas or use “plug numbers” to dummy up values that users don’t like as a result of cell calculations, or copy-paste formulas onto wrong cells, etc. And it’s FAST. And it’s CAPABLE. You can store billions of records in an Access database. Excel has finally broken its old limitations of 65,000-something rows and 255 columns – in a big way, in fact. Excel 2010 now allows 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns. That’s a lot of data, all right. But try filling a significant number of those rows and columns and watch your performance bog.

Excel is a very nice program for limited data sets and for display, but – and I wish I could teach our various managers at work this fact – it’s not a tool for managing mass quantities of data. It’s just not built for that.

But if your users can’t type, then that’s the course they should be taking now!

@DaphneT Good thoughts. Good. This question is turning out better than I had hoped for!

@wundayatta Access is a MS Office program…if you’ve mastered the tricks of the trade for Word and Excel, you can apply those to Access. As I said, I’ve played with it, but had no goal so I just kind of wandered away. I think I’ll sign myself up as a student and learn along with my actual student…hopefully one step ahead.

Yes…I agree too with what @CWOTUS is saying. I created a ‘database’ in Excel for our entire office (5 people) to use but…I’m the only one who understands it so I’m the only one who really uses it. Links break here and there and if you don’t know how to restore them (which takes 2 seconds if you know how) then it’s useless. I need to learn Access. I need to make a really-real data base that other people can just use and not have to know how to repair….

Well, MY mind is made up! Carry on, please!

@CWOTUS I’d never had an occasion to wonder if Excel had a limitation on numbers of cells until very recently, when I was working with someone else’s file – that was surprising! I work with many files, each containing relatively small amounts of data, so this is not really an issue for me. Since I do more analysis in R, I’m mostly just creating columns of numbers. But I’m kind of intrigued by people’s faithfulness to Access… maybe I’ll mess around with it for kicks, and see if it takes me anywhere useful.

@dappled_leaves What is “R”?

R is a free, yet highly respectable, programming language used for statistics. Users can contribute code, so it keeps growing and improving the more people use it.

You had lost me at “R is an implementation of the S programming language combined with lexical scoping semantics” ♥

@Dutchess_III you are so not ready for R, SPSS, Stata, SAS or Sigmaplot or OOLs. The first four are the pride and curses of mathematicians, engineers and statistical analysts. OOLs are Object-Oriented Languages. Something for you to keep in mind though: if any of your students take to Access like a duck to water, definitely connect them with someone who can connect them with the nuts and bolts of OOLs, they’ll just naturally gravitate deeper into that world if given the opportunity.

@DaphneT. Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.

I forgot to mention that, in my opinion, it’s easier to learn PowerPoint on your own with a decent book than it is to learn MSAccess, especially the database/table design and data query aspects.

Most people have an intuitive understanding of the results in PowerPoint because they are visual. And ref Access, people have little idea what’s under the hood of an application front-end and even less idea about the data manipulation at the foundation. So guided coursework for Access will be especially useful to an interested student.

I use neither PowerPoint nor Access, and I would consider significant time spent teaching either to be a complete waste of effort.

@why @cwilbur? Just because it’s something you would never use? That’s ridiculous.

Yeah, I’m stuck on Access. I started building a data base at work and was following along with the lessons. I got so far, then got stuck. I sent it home to work on it some more here but….my new computer doesn’t even have freaking Access on it.

@cwilbur Do enlighten us, please.

What do you recommend instead of MSAccess, especially for people who don’t have big IT staff on hand? A lot of non-IT people I work with (fortune 500) get prototypes built in Access and turn them over to the heavy-lifters to deploy in a serious server process. We don’t have enough IT staff to get all of it done “the right way” until we know it’s correct and necessary.

And regarding PowerPoint do you have an alternative that does similar stuff or do you just not like what it does? At least you could cite something authoritative like the analysis by Edward Tufte.
As Mr. Tufte would say the best use of PowerPoint is as a slide projector. If you need one of those then why not use it. If you really need to present a lot of information then you need some information design, go read Mr. Tufte’s brilliant books on information display.

The way I see it, just learning about the different applications gives them a jumping off point, a starting point, for something they may need in the future.

Because Access is a toy database. Any time you spend using it would be better spent learning something even as craptacular as MySQL.

And PowerPoint is, as the estimable Mr. Tufte points out, a tool for creating chartjunk at best.

Depends on what you’re trying to learn, for learning relational data concepts MSAccess is fine. As a data_server_, Access has serious limitations, but for a self-contained desktop app it’s hard to beat.

Sure, if you want to be an IT person you’re better off with MySql or Sybase or… some real relational data server. But it sounds like the course is MS Office suite – oriented / desktop app – oriented. It’s not an engineering course.

Access should be considerred on two fronts, database and application frontend. You can teach/learn a lot about building frontend forms and workflows on Access. And if your application grows up you can connect it over the network to the MySql or Sybase or…. in the server room.

A lot of people who aren’t “IT’ people get a lot of simple work done with Access. You can’t expect folks like that to train-up on MySql or Sybase just to have a tool to work on what they really have to do.