First, I reiterate, hammer into people, technology is a tool, not the end goal. Your goal should not be to just learn MS Word.
Say you take a 10-week beginner class in Word. Now what? What are you going to do with it?
You should learn Word to help you achieve some goal.
I always make my class do goal setting, then we learn Word and they are responsible for creating documents that move them forward in their goal.
The goal does not have to be a job. One of the great things about personal computing is that it is a tool that regular people have available to them to move their business along, to create a polished and professional images, to create order and structure to their projects, and to do more than 1 person could before technology and all for so much cheaper than before tech. (The $100 Startup is a great book to that end.)