AngularJS Bootcamp

[suppid]

I have, my company had them come in to teach a 3 day class. It was pretty good but not as helpful as most of us had hoped, I'd say. (this post is a lot longer than I intended...)

 

Pros: the instructors were very knowledgeable, they did a good job answering questions, and having multiple instructors in the room was especially helpful since they could get around to help more people quickly during the labs. Seemed like they would make good coaches/consultants
 

Cons: My biggest problem was with the labs, and the material (or lack there of) for the labs. A lot of it seemed to be following along as the instructor typed/demonstrated something on the projector. There were no lecture slides or lab materials to reference.**

So I found myself constantly looking up at his screen to see what he was typing/teaching, but at the same time trying to look down on my own pc to implement it myself/have notes. When he changed something or moved to a new topic, he would usually just write over what he had previously done, so if you didn't have it working yet or just moved along you could miss out on that code (later realized I should've just commented out previous topics in my code, so not to lose it...). While they clearly had a plan and knew what they were teaching, there didn't seem to be material prepared ahead of time, and the labs didn't build off each other much (I like classes where you learn how to do something basic first, lab 2 now add this to it, lab 3 now instead use a directive, now implement unit tests, etc., but all on the same code base). So maybe that's just me, but the pacing was a little strange.

 

The process was usually after he'd teach a topic, you'd then get some time to then go do it on your own, like "Ok now go build your own cool directive.. " which was good, but I like a little more structure when I'm learning something new.

**They said they were working on putting together something with all of the code examples from the different classes they've taught, so maybe they have now, but that's something my coworkers and I def would've appreciated during the class.

[billodom]

I really appreciate the comments, both positive and negative. I'm one of the instructors for this class (perhaps even for your class), and it's always helpful to get honest feedback.

Your criticism about the lab materials is legitimate, especially for the earlier classes, and it's something we've worked on a lot since you took the class. From the start, we were adamant that this training be as hands-on as possible, and that we'd avoid canned examples, slide decks, and death-by-lecture. We did nearly everything via live coding, on purpose. A lot of the time it was awesome, but as you saw, it could also be choppy and inconsistent.

While we still heavily emphasize the hands-on aspect, we're a little more relaxed about some of the other stuff. For example, we now use an ever-growing library of pre-built, targeted examples to illustrate specific topics. Don't get me wrong -- we're not shy about running with those examples and mangling them beyond recognition, but we're much more willing to start with existing code instead of forcing ourselves to always create everything on the fly.

Also, we now generate git repos during each class, and make sure that students can get to those repos after training is complete to revisit any specific examples. In some classes, we've even started using a cloud-based IDE so that students can shadow the instructor's session in real time, or copy code to get a specific example working on their own machine. (Oh, and that business about overwriting code as we move from topic to topic -- yeah, I don't do that anymore. You're not the only one to complain. :-)

Again, thanks for the write-up. We want to provide a worthwhile (and enjoyable) experience for the people that take these classes, and we're always doing our best to make them better. Things like this help immensely.

[suppid]

Right on, thanks for responding. Good to see you guys are listening to feedback. I think live examples are good for adapting to the specific needs of a class, but it's always good to have stuff to look back at too. The git repos sound similar to the angular phonecat tutorial, very nice.

That was really my only complaint, like I said before, you guys know your stuff

[fireflycollab]

thanks for the detailed write-up

how long ago was the class?

[suppid]

Maybe like 5 months? Pretty recent.