Developer Career Tip #0005---Learning Visual Basic---Part 3

Developer Career Tip #0005

Learning Visual Basic---Part 3

In my last two articles, I dealt with ways to learn a new programming language, including taking official Microsoft Curriculum courses at a Microsoft Certified Technical Education Center (CTEC), long term training at a computer programming school or institute, or enrolling in a course at a local colleges or university. All of these options have one thing in common: you need to be present at a predetermined time and place for a specific duration in a classroom led by an instructor. In today's article, I want to discuss an interesting alternative to classroom based training---web based learning.

I've taught programming for 20 years, and up until three years ago, all of it had been via the traditional route of instructor led classroom training. When I was initially approached to teach a web based programming course in Visual Basic (I teach for SmartPlanet and ElementK), I must confess I had my doubts, but within two weeks of beginning the course, I was amazed that not only could web based learning be just as good as traditional classroom based training, but in many ways it was far superior.

From a student's perspective, web based training can solve a myriad of logistical problems. Most web based training is message board based---which means that there's no formal meeting time. Students log in, obtain the week's assignment (usually a reading assignment), and then use the message board to ask questions, and check back later for answers.

For students whose work or personal commitments prevent them from traveling to formal classroom training, web based training permits them to sign into the 'classroom' whenever their schedules permit. Also, many web based programs are self paced, which means you can speed up or slow down the pace of your learning as your schedule demands. And for some students, perhaps the greatest benefit of web based training is that it's typically a fraction of the cost of formal classroom training.

From an instructor's point of view, I was amazed how web based training solved some of the problems I see in my traditional classes. For instance, since there is no formal lecture mode via the Internet, a higher percentage of students actually read the assigned material, since they can't rely on picking up the material in a lecture period. Secondly, since questions and answers are posted publicly on the message board, just about everybody in the class obtains the benefit of the questions that are posed and the answers that I give. Unfortunately, in a traditional classroom setting, students do not always pay attention to the questions others pose, nor listen to the answers.