On Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:35:28 -0500, Rajko M. wrote:
On Wednesday 30 June 2010 17:16:59 Jim Henderson wrote:
the end product is more about ensuring the learner has the ability to pick and choose what they need and validating that they come out of the experience with the knowledge and/or skills they need to do what they're trying to do.
That is how I look on the future of our wiki content. People have no time to delve in depth of each subject that they stumble upon, so give them how to solve task at hand and let them go.
Certainly I see the wiki as a very important piece of the puzzle - but the important aspect that the wiki misses is that not everyone learns most efficiently in that way. That's where additional options improve the accessibility of the content - and can improve the efficiency of knowledge and skills transfer. There are some who learn very well from reading an article; others who have more visual styles of learning learn far better by seeing something done. Still others learn better by diving in and doing - sometimes after reading, sometimes after being shown.
Applied to new users that have experience with Windows, we should present openSUSE trough task solutions that build upon their current knowledge. Simple application (software) introduction will not cut well, as many users can't figure out from list of features what they can do with them.
In general a list of features is an approach that doesn't work very well (there are certain cases where it does, but in general, I'd say it probably doesn't). More effective is to approach the material from a task perspective - because that's what people are looking to figure out; how do I send an e-mail, how do I create a document, how do I fix my network configuration, how do I [....]? That's why in the ideal situation when developing training you do a job task analysis - that way you can figure out what it is that people need to do "on the job" so you can build a flow that provides prerequisite knowledge and concepts and then build from that into the actual performance of the task. So, for example, if building a course on network troubleshooting, you might start with some networking concepts (IP addresses, MAC addresses, routing, DNS, etc) and then add to that some labs on how to use network troubleshooting tools (tcpdump, wireshark, etc), and then from there go to how to interpret the information those tools present - even if one doesn't understand every packet format and every nuance of the data presented - and how to use that to pinpoint a potential problem to resolve. Then from there into actual problem resolution. It's basically the "crawl, walk, run" principle. If users/students can't self-select the "crawl" step but dive right in with the "run" step, if they don't have the knowledge or experience to actually run, then they are likely to become frustrated because they're missing that prerequisite knowledge. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org