Hands on labs vary in quality
Today I decided that I would attend each of the
hands-on labs at TechEd 2001. The first session was entitled "Microsoft
Visual Studio.NET". It wasn't that I didn't know the application, but I'd
only downloaded Beta 2 prior to setting off to TechEd and hadn't had a
chance to get to grips with it.
Sadly, I wasn't destined to get to grips with it
here either. While the About box said Beta 2, it was immediately obvious
this was an earlier build, a fact confirmed by the session organiser a few
moments later.
No matter, at least it was an opportunity for
some more hands-on time with Microsoft personnel on hand to answer any
questions that might arise. This was the case in all of the lab sessions,
and mighty helpful folk they were too.
My problem at TechEd wasn't with the support
however, it was with the hugely variable quality of the labs themselves.
Yes, there is a time constraint. Yes, Microsoft wants to show off as much of
its product as possible. Yes, some people are satisfied by building an
application or a Web Service from scratch within the time available for the
lab. However, I remain unconvinced that getting people to cut and paste code
out of Notepad, and just slap it in the code module of a form, is the right
way to go about it.
It is, however, vastly preferable to the horror
that was the Microsoft BizTalk Server lab book. Here the lesson items formed
part of the content, but were not neatly separated. It was not obvious where
explanation and corresponding action began and ended, and action sequences
were scattered liberally through the dialog, sometimes highlighted in bold,
and sometimes not.
In the Visual Studio.NET lab you basically turned
to page one of the lab and got on with it. In the eMbedded Visual Basic lab
you had the choice of getting on with it, or trying to follow what the
instructor was doing on the large screen. The problem with the latter
approach is that if the instructor runs through stuff too quickly you are
left with the choice of either trying to work through it on your own,
accompanied by the distraction of someone talking about an item on an
entirely different page, or of opting to follow what is happening on the
main screen, and then rushing to catch up with the instructor in a lull.
The instructor in the eMbedded Visual Basic lab
was coming out with some highly useful information on various aspects of
working with this code, so I opted to just concentrate on what he was
saying, and to play catch-up later on. As it turned out that didn't matter
as he completed the lab with some 45 minutes still to go, so I had plenty of
time to do my own code later on. That was great, but I wish I had known that
from the start as I wouldn't have tried juggling action on my system, while
at the same time trying to concentrate on what was being said at the front
of the room.
The 64-bit Windows lab was a combination of
presentation and hands-on work, and I would have to say I found the
presentation more useful. The best lab of all was definitely the Business
Intelligence lab which was basically hands-on with OLAP Cubes in Microsoft
SQL Server 2000.
The lab manual was well presented, the steps to
follow were clearly laid out, and the accompanying explanations for each
step were of the highest order. They were perhaps slightly too high as this
lab really expected you to be familiar with the product, and with the
concepts of data mining and extraction using the OLAP Cube technology.
The lab book was also very long, and there was no
way to have got through it in the time available, so in the end I opted to
just do the first section and the instructor then helped me to pick the more
interesting parts from the second section. I thought that some of the
explanations could have been written in a simpler manner, but that would
definitely have required a lot more pages in the manual. As you couldn't
take it with you, that probably wouldn't have helped all that much.
Please don't get me wrong - I think the hands-on
lab is a vital ingredient in the TechEd melting pot, and long may they
continue to be there, but I do think that more thought needs to be given as
to how the labs are set out and implemented.
The lab book for the Business Intelligence lab
worked best for me, and also for others I questioned about their lab
experience. Strangely enough it appeared to be the least well attended lab
of all.
The format of that book, accompanied with clearer
explanations that didn't assume previous knowledge, would have been ideal
for the other sessions. It would be nice to think that the teams will sit
down at the end of TechEd, go over the feedback forms for the labs, and see
where changes need to be made.
There is no questioning the knowledge of the lab
instructors, but there need to be improvements in how information on the
topic du jour is being presented to the attendees.
Dave Moss
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