April will likely go down as the most challenging month of IS101-3003/5, Spring 2026!
Most students don't use Excel on a daily basis or have only a superficial exposure to most popular spreadsheet application. LabSim's Chapter 5 Microsoft Excel opened students' eyes. My signature A6 Spreadsheet Analysis with Trailer gave students the chance to apply what they learned. The Fun with Functions workbook from the then digital literacy program director Dr. Mark Taormino, challenged and likely frustrated students.
Today also marks the beginning of transition from Phase 2 to Phase 3. Half of the students have taken and passed the MO-210 Excel certification and many have also sent in their second capstone assignment, A7 Mail Merge. This milestone also marks the transition from Phase 2 to Phase 3 (see my January post for the phases).
Since my previous blog post, Zakiyyah and Josias joined Kevin in qualifying, taking, and passing the MO-210 ahead of schedule. By the time of this blog post, ten of their classmates joined them with Josias, Ivette, and Valeria earning a 1,000 out of 1,000 perfect score!
Nine students challenged Bonus Quiz 9 – Search Engine Optimization Hats, Techniques, and Consequences; ccTLD Hack; and URL Components Revisited. Ivette earned a perfect score while Kevin and JD earned a near-perfect score.
Six students challenged Bonus Quiz 10 РInternet Search Engine and $21.5 Million Business Email Scam at Path̩. Kevin and Ivette earned a near-perfect score.
Four students challenged Bonus Quiz 11 – The Internet, Bob, Vint, and Tim; and Mat Honan’s Epic Hack. Kevin earned a perfect score while Scott, Ivette, and Vania earned a near-perfect score.
Not only did Josias conquered MO-210 Excel ahead of schedule, right before publishing this post, Josias also conquered MO-310 PowerPoint ahead of schedule becoming the second Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) Associate from IS101-3003/5, Spring 2026. Well done Josias :-)
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The final group of students gave their A5 Slideshow Presentation after I gave my Lecture 7: Charts and Visualization. Reflecting on all thirty-three students' performance, I identified one more that will receive bonus credit.
Where as Vania, Ivette, Kevin, Josias, Zakiyyah, and Nicholas earned bonus for being the first to send in their drafts and present; Chae for delivering a polished and primetime-ready draft slideshow; Rafa went out of his comfort zone and tried something beyond simply showcasing his topic.
The future leader added an "Expected Outcome" slide at the beginning of his slideshow. Yes, this caused his presentation to run over the allotted time, but the young man's courage to try/practice something he learned outside of IS101 is what earned Rafa bonus credit :-)
Josias and Zakiyyah were not the only students that work ahead of schedule. Kevin continued his proactive momentum and knocked out Bonus Quiz 12 – Key Excel and Spreadsheet Concepts & BQ13 – Apex of Excel and sent in a flawless A9 Object Linking and Embedding Options and IF Statement.
My students are not the only people that deserves recognitions. Several years ago before we began using LabSim, the then digital literacy program director, Dr. Mark Taormino created his Fun with Functions workbook to help students practice Excel operations and functions to better prepare for the MO-210 exam.
Fourteen years ago, Mat Honan's misfortune prompted him to investigate and share his experiences with the world. To see whether Mr. Honan recovered his lost data or not, read the article and at the end, he gives you a way to find out.
Ten years ago, Sir Tim Berners-Lee was awarded the 2016 ACM A.M. Turing Award for inventing (circa 1990) the World Wide Web, the first web browser, and fundamental protocols (HTTP, HTML) and algorithms allowing the Web to scale.
Twenty-two years ago, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn were jointly awarded the 2004 ACM A.M. Turing Award for their pioneering work on internetworking, specifically the design and implementation of the TCP/IP communication protocols (circa early 1970's) that form the foundation of the Internet.
Click on the image for a larger/clearer view
Last week, I presented to the class a calendar for the final four/five weeks of our semester together and a roadmap to go above-and-beyond IS101. As I wrap-up this pen-ultimate post for IS101-3003/5, Spring 2026, I look back on the students who stopped participating, the students who are currently working hard to catch up, the students who chose to do the bonus quizzes since the beginning of the semester, and the students who finished both capstone assignments. I wonder how many students will join Kevin and Josias in doing more bonus quizzes & bonus assignments and pursuing more MOS certifications ^_^
Here are the slideshows, capstones, and appreciation of contributions in April (click on an image for a larger view):
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Hi Professor Wu, reading your post honestly reminded me how challenging Phase 2 has been, especially with the transition into the Excel Expert material. The “climbing toward the summit” comparison feels accurate because right now I genuinely feel stuck somewhere halfway up the mountain trying to understand nested functions without falling off mentally. I understand the concepts individually, but once several functions are combined together I sometimes freeze up and struggle to follow the logic. For macros, I mostly rely on rereading the steps and repeatedly practicing them through GMetrix until the process slowly starts making more sense.
ReplyDeleteSeeing classmates earn perfect or near perfect scores on the Excel Associate exam also made me a little self conscious. Part of me starts wondering if maybe I am not pushing myself hard enough when I compare my struggles to students who seem to grasp the material much faster. At the same time, I know focusing too much on other people’s scores is probably distracting me from what I actually need to improve. Everyone learns differently, and I think I need to focus more on building my own understanding instead of measuring myself against everyone else.
Right now I am trying to study the Expert material more deeply and focus on understanding the concepts instead of just memorizing steps. Even though the process has been frustrating at times, I know repetition and practice are still helping little by little. Hopefully with enough GMetrix practice and repetition, I can eventually understand nested functions more naturally instead of freezing up every time I see multiple formulas combined together. Even if I am struggling now, I still want to keep improving and produce the best work that I am personally capable of doing.
The Excel part of this course is something that I would go back and try to re-learn in the outside world. In my dismay, I could not finish and do anything above and beyond from the course. While I said in my first blog post I am an overachiever, I am also an over thinker and anxiety creeps up every time I try to push further. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or something just tells me I cannot go further. Nevertheless, I chose to push through those obstacles, being lazy is one of them.
ReplyDeleteWith all the materials and lessons that you gave us, I must say it is at some point life changing and could mold your students into better people in the future. Learning how to instructions are so basic yet so fundamental.
I may not go further like other students getting the expert, but if I can do this course again, I would do things differently. Starting with doing assignments early and maybe replying to the messages you sent us before the semester starts. Also, I downloaded all the PDF that you gave us in canvas for later reading. I may not do the bonus quizzes attached to it but reading the articles is a plus to my knowledge and learning.
Excel was easier than I thought it would be. I think it's because for me, Word covered most of the basics, something like the properties, or where certain functions would be under the ribbon section. We also had a lot more practice for Excel than either of the other exams. Thank you Dr. Mark Taormino for the Fun With Functions, that was frustrating to do but it did help quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that there are many people that are exceeding expectations in IS101 it's great that they're motivated. I can anticipate that using excel in the real world is definitely different than how we learned it in our assignments. There are going to be students who do and don't use excel for the future, I can only hope that the students who need this information retain and use it well. All the tools that were provided to help us succeed are very much appreciated.
ReplyDeleteI found the passage about Sir Tim Berners-Lee interesting because it reminded me of how far the world has improved in technology. Lee has allowed improvement to communication to the point that someone in Britain can receive texts from someone else in the United States within a few seconds. Microsoft wouldn’t even exist without the internet.
ReplyDeleteThe Excel portion was certainly the most challenging one yet but it taught a lot of useful skills that I will take with me. It was thanks to the Fun With Functions workbook I was able to do well on my MO-210 exam.
ReplyDeleteGoing into MO-210 really opened my eyes because I had never used Excel in my lifetime until IS101. In Phase 2, I found it really challenging on A6 and the Excel functions. I also feel that MO-210 was the most challenging for me since I thought I wouldn't learn most of the functions, which result that i really want to learn more about the functions and practice it on excel.
ReplyDeleteIt’s really inspiring to see how much progress students have made throughout Phase 2 and how many are pushing themselves to go above and beyond with certifications and bonus work. It shows how much growth can happen when students stay engaged and challenge themselves.
ReplyDeleteThis phase of the class was not as easy as I was expecting. There were a couple of functions that were easy to grasp such as, Sum, Max, Min, Average, and the Sort Functions. Some functions that were difficult were, Concat, and Concatenate.
ReplyDeleteExcel indeed was challenging for sure! But without a challenge, we wouldn't learn and grow. And for that reason, I actually enjoyed Excel just as much as Word and PowerPoint. I think with enough practice it wouldn't be as bad as people make it out to be! :)
ReplyDeleteYes Professor as you mentioned, LabSim’s Chapter 5 Microsoft Excel and A6 Spreadsheet analysis with trailer gave us the opportunity to practice extensively and apply what we learned to real world situations, which was eye-opening for many of us. All of the other assignments were also very practical, helped us succeed, and were greatly appreciated.
ReplyDeleteI will admit, Professor Wu, that being one of the first students to do the slideshow presentation was nerve-racking because I did not know what to expect or what your expectations would be. Also, the Fun with Functions activity was amazing because it helped me understand how absolute references work on a deeper level, and it gave me more practice working with functions. I really enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteI can agree to excel being the most difficult but after completing it, I don't generally think it was all that bad. If you simply prepare and study enough of the material it isn't as difficult it seems. Memorizing the formulas and applying through repetition was a huge help while having to do it within A6.
ReplyDeletePhase 2 honestly felt like the point where the class got really serious. Excel was definitely rough at times, but seeing people pass the certifications and finish everything ahead of schedule was actually motivating.
ReplyDeleteExcel was really technical, I'm glad that there isn't anymore surprises and don't get anxious when I have to come across if ever again.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate all the help you did in helping me throughout the Excel phase. I struggled with Excel but managed to get a pretty good score on the exam. I learned a lot and I'm sure I'll be using these skills again in the future, thank you for not giving up on us!
ReplyDeleteExcel was quite challenging at times, especially remembering all of the functions. The Fun with Functions activities definitely helped a ton!
ReplyDeleteHi Professor Wu, I am glad I was able to stay ahead for a lot of the assignments. I was hoping for a perfect excel score but 960 made me very proud! I thought I was going to get a much lower score because of all the difficult functions. I was very thankful for Fun with Functions I did it twice for practice. But overall thank you for the support and for the recognition it made doing the work feel that much more meaningful. I hope you have an amazing summer break!
ReplyDeleteGetting through Excel was a lot of work! But I'm glad to have pushed through it, and I feel that the knowledge I gained will stick with me for years to come.
ReplyDelete