Age 33-34 (2009) (7) Development of A Data Entry Simulator in Job Training
When I went to job training and mainly engaged in data entry work, my concern was enhancing my strong points. I was interested a lot in computer, and I sought opportunities to learn and practice more a little bit beyond data entry and operation of an office suite software.
I'm especially interested in making something on a PC, and I thought the only choice was through programming.
Meanwhile, among our data entry team, improving data entry quality is an important agenda. Practice makes perfect, but the problem was, there wasn't any offline practice environment. There was only written and online static documents of entry rules and a few examples, though. (These was very useful themselves and the management had really effective method to feedback operators, though)
Besides, there wasn't much data enough to give operators work fully, and there was a lot of idle time.
These were the reason why I tried to make a data entry simulator.
I chose the platform an internet browser with JavaScript, because there wasn't no special programing environment and participants were not allowed to install one for security reason, and most computers have a internet browser in which JavaScript runs. You can edit codes even on the notepad, the default text editor on Windows PC.
At that time, (and even now) I didn't had much knowledge about JavaScript and HTML. I had elementary and intuitive knowledge through some tutorials on the Web and viewing several source of web pages. With help of several data entry team members, I began programming.
Because data entry works often deal with personal information, real data used for work couldn't be used. We needed to make simulated data which wouldn't suggest real personal data from clients.
With a week of learning and trial-and-error, I managed to make a form and submit button to check if each entry matches the designated answer, and urge the user to try again for mistaken items.
The problem was storing results to visualize members' improvement. JavaScript was basically a client-side language and its main job is manipulating a document on a browser. It can't use neither storage of the PC the browser is running nor one over a network. (This is because I implemented simulator function into single HTML file with scripts, and because I didn't know any option to use storage on any script language I knew and I could use in the training PC function.)
Another data entry team member was making similar simulator with Excel VBA. At that time I'm not familiar with VBA, so I didn't even imagine VBA was a better way to realize a simulator. Later I learned with VBA at least you can use your PC's hard drive as a storage.
Before long a lot of data to enter arrived, and the project was suspended. Several months later, the company which ran the job training withdrew from the data entry work, and the data entry team was dismissed, and deployed to other training or work program.
The experience to develop a data entry simulator strengthened my desired even more to get a job somehow related to development of computer programs, which made my study harder, although effective in passing an exam, but pointless to become a real member of a developer.
At that time I didn't really understand the big difference between a programmer and a system engineer, although several speakers for job hunting guidance and a few job coaches had emphasized the difference. This made my study for tests of information technologies much of rote learning, especially diagrams which show the requirement or process of a development.
I'm especially interested in making something on a PC, and I thought the only choice was through programming.
Meanwhile, among our data entry team, improving data entry quality is an important agenda. Practice makes perfect, but the problem was, there wasn't any offline practice environment. There was only written and online static documents of entry rules and a few examples, though. (These was very useful themselves and the management had really effective method to feedback operators, though)
Besides, there wasn't much data enough to give operators work fully, and there was a lot of idle time.
These were the reason why I tried to make a data entry simulator.
I chose the platform an internet browser with JavaScript, because there wasn't no special programing environment and participants were not allowed to install one for security reason, and most computers have a internet browser in which JavaScript runs. You can edit codes even on the notepad, the default text editor on Windows PC.
At that time, (and even now) I didn't had much knowledge about JavaScript and HTML. I had elementary and intuitive knowledge through some tutorials on the Web and viewing several source of web pages. With help of several data entry team members, I began programming.
Because data entry works often deal with personal information, real data used for work couldn't be used. We needed to make simulated data which wouldn't suggest real personal data from clients.
With a week of learning and trial-and-error, I managed to make a form and submit button to check if each entry matches the designated answer, and urge the user to try again for mistaken items.
The problem was storing results to visualize members' improvement. JavaScript was basically a client-side language and its main job is manipulating a document on a browser. It can't use neither storage of the PC the browser is running nor one over a network. (This is because I implemented simulator function into single HTML file with scripts, and because I didn't know any option to use storage on any script language I knew and I could use in the training PC function.)
Another data entry team member was making similar simulator with Excel VBA. At that time I'm not familiar with VBA, so I didn't even imagine VBA was a better way to realize a simulator. Later I learned with VBA at least you can use your PC's hard drive as a storage.
Before long a lot of data to enter arrived, and the project was suspended. Several months later, the company which ran the job training withdrew from the data entry work, and the data entry team was dismissed, and deployed to other training or work program.
The experience to develop a data entry simulator strengthened my desired even more to get a job somehow related to development of computer programs, which made my study harder, although effective in passing an exam, but pointless to become a real member of a developer.
At that time I didn't really understand the big difference between a programmer and a system engineer, although several speakers for job hunting guidance and a few job coaches had emphasized the difference. This made my study for tests of information technologies much of rote learning, especially diagrams which show the requirement or process of a development.
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