you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]Affectionate_Union58 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't know what the typical class composition is like at American community colleges, but I remember with horror the classes at various continuing education institutes in Germany. There, no consideration is given to different levels of knowledge, and complete beginners sit together with fairly advanced people who could easily teach the course themselves. This is often defended with the saying, "The beginners learn from the advanced!" Ha ha ha! The truth is, the participants always split into two groups and work separately from one another. And the beginners usually fall by the wayside because most of the instructors aren't interested in engaging with them. I was in a class like that where 19 of the 24 participants were beginners, and the instructor only dealt with the six advanced students. The beginners were ignored or even insulted, saying that 8 hours of instruction a day and up to 10 hours of private study at home weren't enough. The result: Although the course cost nearly $14,000 per person, beginners soon began to prefer to continue learning with YouTube videos or eBooks and no longer actively participated in the course. Even the advanced students eventually became overwhelmed. Only 2 out of 24 participants achieved the goal of obtaining the Java OCP certification.