I wanted to thank everyoe who replied on and off list. I certainly understand the time it takes to prepare for the class. I'm budgetting more than 8x factor Randal suggested as I'm a Mac/Linux guy and the laptops provided for instruction are all WinXP.
When I do get the course material done, I'll post it on the internet for free. Thanks again! On Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 05:41:16AM -0800, Randal L. Schwartz wrote: > >>>>> "Smylers" == Smylers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Smylers> Generally allow 5 times as long to write material as to present it; > Smylers> that is, allow a week to write a 1-day course. Possibly longer if > Smylers> you're new to writing training materials. > > [...] > > Smylers> The way round this is to work backwards: > > [...] > > This is all very excellent advice, echoing what I would have said too. > > The only thing I would caution on is that "5x" is a bit low. I typically > allocate 8x on a new course (a workday per hour), and only about things I'm > familiar with. Even more time if I have to figure out what's important, and > what I can leave out. > > The other thing to keep in mind (as we've presented in our "Teaching 'Learning > Perl'" course a couple of times at conferences) is that you should be very > clear about the "end points" of your course. Where will you imagine everyone > is starting? Where do you think they all want to end up? And then be sure to > communicate that. > > For example, we presume everyone knows subroutines and arrays before they > start the llama, so we get to set the expectations very quickly in the first > hour, and we don't have to spend time describing why someone might want a > subroutine or array. > > Once you have the begin and end point, MAKE THAT A STRAIGHT LINE. You may be > tempted to throw a lot more stuff in there, but if you do, you will quickly > exceed the time allotted for your course (and for you to write the materials). > People can add their own "bushiness" to the knowledge once they get the > "trunk". But you have to teach the whole trunk, or people will be lost. > > -- > Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 > <merlyn@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/> > Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. > See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training! > -- Brad Lhotsky
