Students are currently arriving at the university without any basic understanding of file hierarchies (folders containing folders and files). And they have no clue what a zip file is. Nor do they know what to do with it.

I used to be able to just say “please download the materials from [learning platform] and organize them so you can work with them before class” and that would be fine. Nowadays I have to give step-by-step instructions that involve things like “create a folder”, “navigate to your download folder” and “cut (ctrl-x) the files and paste (ctrl-v) them into the new folder” unless I want half the students to get lost.

Some don’t even have a concept of downloading a file. They’re so used to streaming and mobile UIs that they seem to think that a downloaded file is simply gone once you close it (and needs to be re-downloaded).