Category: Education

Self explanatory

Selecting a “sample application” for class labs

Class labs are more effective if they use a scenario that builds up to a sample solution. Attendees leave the class feeling they have built something and have a toolkit useful for their environment. The difficulty comes with selecting the scenario. It has to be complex enough to support labs on advanced topics but simple enough to be readily understood.

I once taught a class on database usage that had a rental car agency as the sample application. It was so complicated that some users complained that they did not attend the class to learn the rental-car business. Others who knew the rental-car business complained the business rules in the sample were wrong. These discussions took away from class time and enjoyment. We ended up selecting another scenario when the class was revised.

My most recent lab creation involved a simple case of “login failure” from linux_secure logs. They were easy to discover and examine. The labs were designed to investigate the situation by looking at other data sources and correlating them to the log records. The use of statistical operators  and data visualization in the product were used to discover how often these failures occurred, which accounts were most frequently involved, which geo locations originated the login request and other clues. I’m not a security expert and knew that this was not a very sophisticated example of systems under attack. But it was simple enough for all attendees to immediately grasp and the experts in the class were kind enough to go along with such an elementary use case. (it was, after all, the first class in the curriculum so it was elementary). I am pleased to say that this scenario was used successfully for years.

Recently I notice the class labs were changed to use an e-commerce example. I believe this was done to align the class labs to the documentation examples. Whether this is a good thing or not has been the subject of debate in my latest consulting engagement. This will be a topic for a future blog post.

 

What’s the worse class review you have ever received?

It’s fun to ask a group of instructors about the worse review they’ve ever gotten after a class. These reviews are commonly called “smile sheets” because the paper-based ones for in-person training requires the attendee to hand it to the person they are reviewing. The smile sheets also asked about the class, class labs and facilities. But the instructor section is the most important to instructors. Sometimes compensation is linked to these assessments. And as instructors we want to do a good job. We live for the “thank you! Great class!” we often get at class end.

It is astounding to me to have experienced and heard about intentional cruelty inflicted on a person trying their best to do their jobs. We instructors have all had classes where we were a bit off. Maybe we were sick or were asked (with no choice to say no) to teach a class that we were not ready to teach. But we are also professionals who have usually taught a variety of classes over a few years. So we can’t be as bad as: This is the worse class I have every attended – BY FAR. With BY FAR underlined several times and a hand-written zero added to the 1-5 ranking. This is my worse review ever. Since the rest of the class liked the class, how can this one be so bad?  What kind of person does something like this knowing this could cause the instructor grief – maybe put someone’s job in peril? The kind of person who would kick a puppy out of the way is my opinion. The kind of person who refuses to tip because of some perceived flaw in service or because “they should pay them enough”. Yes, I have also been a waitress and encountered these sub-humans while doing the hardest jobs I’ve ever had to do.

I am not advocating saying some service is good when it is below par. But ratings of zero and no tips goes way beyond normal expression of dissatisfaction and the need to hold people accountable. It is bullying . It can have serious consequences such as bad annual reviews, low raises, inability to pay bills and job termination. Fortunately for me, none of these things happened in this instance. It just left me angry and depressed.

Once while teaching in Germany, I encountered a review sheet that had no instructor rating on it – it was intentionally left blank. Puzzled, I asked why. Turns out the “workers’ council” deemed the rating system and how it was used by managers as grossly unfair. I agree with this completely!

So how does one measure the effectiveness and value of a class?  More on this later. Let us know your worse review story.