Students aren’t idiots Mine are actually very smart They just aren’t used to work like this with a computer Once I explained things and showed how the "Files" tab in RStudio reflects a specific folder in the Finder, they immediately got it You just need to show them once how it works
but if they're smart, why wouldn't they be able to figure out what a directory is on their own?
The absolute worst approach to this would be to be condescending and to treat them like idiots who know nothing Younger generations aren’t stupid They know many things They just have a vastly different experience of interacting with computers
The other thing I have found I need to explicitly show learners is that the directory shown in the Files tab is not necessarily the same as the current working directory in the console. Getting people comfortable with the idea that the console has a current location used for filepaths is hard.