tryGit: it's the teach, not the tech.

I picked up a link to a free online course from a recent Linux Voice podcast. I tried the course and wasn’t really impressed with it. The interface is nice, with an embedded virtual terminal to let you practice typing in the commands but the pedagogy is pretty weak. There’s nothing in the presentation that indicates that the designers understand how to construct understanding: all this lovely bit of code is doing is rehearsing a list of commands (and there’s even a click-once shortcut if you can’t be bothered actually typing). It’s more of a checklist than a course. It would be easy to turn it into a really effective bit of online learning with the addition of some better structure and graphics, and maybe a little assessment for learning. A shame, really, as it is clearly a loss leader to sell the Code School itself: I am in the market for some good quality online learning in their area, but I’m not likely to look any further at their catalogue.