Instructor Critique

Through the course of my project development, I depended on several "instructors," including Lynda.com, www3 schools, jQuery forums, Peter Rich, and the Hard Core Club.

The first tutorial I did was with Lynda.com on HTML5. That instructor was very specific, had a process that well thought-out before the presentation, and had a very clear voice that I could hear. I was very impressed with this tutorial. However, the next tutorial I did with CSS was not as good. The instructor kept making mistakes and correcting them through the tutorial. It seemed that he could have done a little more work before the tutorial to make it just a little bit more smooth and understandable. But overall I felt that Lynda.com was a good place to go to start on something you know very little about. It took me through all the steps and got me working at a functional level.

I frequently referred to w3 schools for help with how to make horizontal lists, making links display in new windows, and other tricks like that. It was a really nice reference so I could check my syntax with online examples and better understand the code I was using.

After my classmate told me about the JQuery overlay, I had a hard time trying to implement that. I had to look up what others had posted on forums to understand what using that would look like in my code.

For me the best instructor for the course was the course instructor, Peter Rich. Although he often let me do things the wrong way before I learned the right way (which frustrated me), he directly helped me on my project, which help is always the best way anyways. And I often found that after he helped a little, I could figure out for myself what I needed to do.

For setting up the database, I also used Kevin Ashton's Hard Core Club. The only trouble with that was that I also used the tutorials on Lynda.com, which advised other ways to set up the database. Because I felt that both were good sources, I was confused as to which one I should use, and they were conflicting and for a time, having gone through both kept my database from working. I'm still not very clear with the whole process, but I better understand the options.

I was glad to have so many instructors this semester. I feel that through this project, I know where I can go to get assistance on projects, and I have a better feel for the resources that are available to instructional designers. Thank you, teachers!