Re: Attention Experienced Professionals

"Daniel Morgan" <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> wrote in message news:1097720224.593786_at_yasure...

> My students are all 35+ years old. All have a BA or BS degree minimum.
> Almost all have 10+ years of experience. And 75+% are in industry doing
> the job albeit sometimes poorly. They need to learn the skills necessary
> to do the job and do it well.

For years, I taught 1 or 2 week intensive courses to DEC's customer's and employees. After I left DEC, they were willing to hire me (at a very good rate!) to teach people Rdb programming and design. They didn't like putting an "outsider" in from of their customers, but they didn't mind having me teach their software specialists. And they had me teach a few customer courses in Mexico and Puerto Rico, when the course had to be taught in Spanish.

These people were competent professionals, with a degree or "equivalent experience". They didn't need to learn how to program. The programming examples used BASIC, C, and COBOL. Many of these people knew their language at least as well as I did. They needed to learn SQL, they needed to learn how to use precompilers and module languages, they needed to learn the rudiments of relational design.

But mostly they needed to "get it" about databases, relations, tables, and indexes. Sometimes what they already knew was an obstacle to learning. Often, it was a help.

I used collaboration to the hilt, especially in lab work. If one student already "got it" and explained it to another student who didn't "get it", as far as I was concerned, real education was going on. Of course, I wasn't responsible for certifying these people. The only certificate Digital gave them was a certificate of attendance. Received on Thu Oct 14 2004 - 13:54:21 CEST