Re: Pre-requisites

Quoting Randal L. Schwartz ([email protected]):
> >>>>> "Nathan" == Nathan Torkington <[email protected]> writes:
> 
> Nathan> [email protected] writes:
> >> Ugh.  Yet another course with one trainee who knows *no* Unix, can't use
> >> an editor, and has never programmed before... despite the clear
> >> pre-requisites
> 
> Nathan> I don't mind rank beginners, but I want to be teaching a beginners
> Nathan> class to a room full of them.  A lone beginner in a class of advanced
> Nathan> people inevitably gets the shaft.  I feel your pain.
> 
> I'm amazed at the number of people I get (about one in each class)
> that believe that "since HTML is a programming language, Perl can't
> be that much harder".  <sigh>

I have found this to be the case as well.  I think it has a lot to do
with the fact that technical people are getting harder to find, so a
lot of non-techies are finding themselves with in the job of webmaster.
And they "heard Perl would help me."  Then, I found out they have
an accounting background...
 
> And yes, I feel your pain as well.  I usually tell them "yeah, I'm
> not gonna say some of this will fly over your head, and feel free
> to ask all the questions you want, but we really do need to keep
> moving through some of this stuff to stay on the timeline sometimes."

When I start the class I clearly let them know what I expect from them.
I spend several minutes describing the pre-requisites and I state that
they need to have experience programming in some high-level programming
language which means they must know:
	what is a program
	what is a file
	what are variables, functions, operators
	what is an if statement, what is a while loop, etc.
I then say that if they don't know these concepts, this class will
move *very* fast, and they should expect to feel lost and frustrated.
I let them know that if they need extra attention, I will do what
I can for them, but in only 3 to 5 days I can't teach them how to program, 
only how to program in Perl.  I then encourage them to stick it out, ask 
any questions they want, and do what they can because they will learn a 
lot, just expect to feel lost.

Taking a few minutes to lay this out to the one or two per class that
really don't belong saves me and them quite a bit of time and frustration.

-- 
James Lee     ==  [email protected]                           Perl Training
Onsight Inc.  ==  http://www.onsight.com/                  Perl Development
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