SPUG: Perl classes, credit courses at community colleges

Tim Maher/CONSULTIX tim at consultix-inc.com
Thu Sep 2 22:14:11 CDT 1999


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According to Kathy:
> 
> Try some of the credit courses at the various community colleges, they are
> cheaper, cover more material, graded, and since the course is spread out over
> 10 or more weeks you can work at home for a bit, and then go to the next class
> with your questions.
<SNIP>
> 
> Note to Samantha  fen_land at hotmail.com
> How can any programming class not be hands on?    In a standard college
> setting class time is only suppose to be 1/3 or less of the actual time you
> spend studying a subject, the other 2/3 are the practice you do at home.  It's
> easy to set up Perl at home, or you may have computer access through the
> school.
> 
> Personally, I'd rather work on labs at home and later check it with the
> instructor, than pay someone to watch me type.

Sounds to me like you don't appreciate the value of having an experienced
instructor on hand at the actual time when you are making your mistakes!

In many cases, an instructor "looking over your shoulder" can explain
that a perplexing error message is an indication that the program
is missing a comma or a curly brace, and in so doing save the student
much frustration and wasted time, while still giving the student the
benefit of learning the syntax lesson.  

I didn't actually count the number of times I spotted this type of
error in the work of my Perl students this week, but I'd guess it was
averaging 3 errors per-day per-student on Monday, tapering off to 
1/2 by today.

(In fact, several of the students taking this week's class are now
subscribers to this list, so they might want to tell you themselves
how they feel about instructor-led classes vs. other modes of
presentation!)

As an educator, I know that different people have different learning
styles and different needs, and will readily admit that no single
approach is best for everybody; but there's a reason why instructor-led
classes are so popular with corporate America  -- they're worth the
money! 8=}
 
*==================================================================*
| Tim Maher, PhD  CEO, Consultix &    (206) 781-UNIX/8649          |
|      Pacific Software Gurus, Inc.   Email: tim at consultix-inc.com |
| "The UNIX/Perl Training Experts"    http://www.consultix-inc.com |
|CLASSES: Shell+Utils: 8/23-27; Perl: 8/30-9/1;  Perl Modules: 9/2;|
*==================================================================*

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