What’s it like to experience one of our live online courses?
Course Structure
Courses consist of one or more “micro-classes.” Each micro-class includes three hours of live guidance with an instructor and interaction with the other participants in the class. In addition, there is custom content and curated online content with accompanying notes. For longer courses, each participant also gets an hour of one-on-one time with the instructor after completion of the course. The micro-classes will be spaced out over several days.
Not all topics require the same amount of time to learn. For some topics, the entire course will consist of a single three-hour micro-class. Considering pre-class preparation activities, your total investment in time amounts to about 3 1/2 hours per micro-class.
Pre-Class Activities
When you’ve registered, you’ll get an invitation to the course message board. If it’s the first time you’ve registered for one of our courses, you’ll receive an invitation to the NeoPragma Training online forum.
There, you’ll find links to downloadable and online material pertinent to the class, including a list of pre-class activities which will take 30 minutes or less to complete. This is meant to help you get the maximum possible value from the time available for live interaction with the instructor and the other participants. In fact, the pre-class activities are part of the course; don’t skip them!
Feedback for You
The first pre-class activity is a Self-Check. This is for you; it isn’t an “assignment” to be submitted to the instructor. The Self-Check helps you understand which aspects of the topic we consider to be the most important, your present level of knowledge, and common misconceptions you may have.
You will revisit the Self Check at two points during the micro-class: First, immediately after completing the pre-class activities and before joining the live session; second, after completing the live session. In this way, you can see how your understanding has evolved through the experience of taking the class.
The courses are organized as live, collaborative sessions. That means you will receive (and give) feedback from all the other participants in the course, through your normal interactions with each other.
You also receive feedback from the instructor in a number of ways. As it is a live, real-time session, you can interact directly with the instructor during class. Each micro-class ends with an instructor-led assessment of what was learned. At the end of each course, you can have up to an hour of one-on-one time with the instructor.
Hands-On Learning
For classes dealing with hands-on practicum in such areas as programming or test automation, the pre-class material will include a link to a Github repository to be used in your class, setup instructions to prepare your development environment, and anything else that might help you get ready to maximize value from the class.
For programming classes, we use a remote Mob Programming process. That means participants take turns as the “driver,” sharing their screen, while the navigator steers development and the rest of the group offers suggestions and asks questions. There will be proportionally more hands-on work than lecture-style presentation – ranging from about 60% to about 90%, depending on the topic.
Follow-Up
Once you’ve registered for your first class with us, you can keep in touch with your classmates and meet others who have taken our training, as well as interacting with instructors, on the NeoPragma Training online forum. Announcements and links to class materials are also posted on the forum.
Credentials
In keeping with the idea of microlearning and microcredentials, you will receive a microcredential on successful completion of each micro-class. This can serve as positive feedback for you as well as a token of your progress along your learning path and a reminder to make good use of your new skills, so that the credential will be meaningful and a source of pride for you.
The microcredential itself has no material value; it’s an image you can place on your website or resume, and a PDF certificate you can print and hang up, if you wish. The value of it lies in the learning it represents, and in the implicit commitment to yourself to apply the new skills diligently and professionally.
Feedback for Us
We ask you to complete a brief questionnaire at the end of each class to help us learn what we can to to improve the value provided to participants. We use a format based on The Perfection Game.
You rate us on a scale of 1-10, where 10 represents “perfect.” If you give us less than a 10, you tell us what you would change to make the score rise to 10.
Of course, class evaluations are always optional, and we really appreciate your taking the time to provide feedback. We’ll have your microcredentials ready for you as soon as we receive it!