What is it like
to
take this course online?
- Online attendees of this course are expected to
do the course
work as following
- Read the pre-class reading material at the
convenient time of their choice - the dates are specified only as a
guideline
- Read the presentation slides (with speaker
noted version if you want) at the convenient
time of their choice
- Do the weekly homework - the due
date of all homework's is two weeks after the final class so you have
plenty of
time to finish them
- Participate in class
email alias
for asking and answering questions or starting discussions
- At this time, I don't have any plan (nor
resource) to offer
real-time webcasting. I am planning to provide flash and
quicktime version of the
presentation and hands-on labs.
When will this
course be offered again?
- It
is my plan to offer this course on a regular basis maybe twice
a year.
- The next session will
get started 6 weeks after the previous session ends.
The exact
date will be announced on the class alias and on the class website.
Can take this course
on
my own pace? If yes, what is the date information
for? What happens on the date specified in the class schedule?
- You can take this
course on your own pace, indeed. The dates are there mainly as a
guideline.
- I am also using the
dates as the dates I post the final versions of the presentations and
hands-on labs. For example, you can safely assume I
will keep changing and improving the contents until the date.
Are all the contents
(presentations, hands-on labs, and homeworks) are ready for downloading?
- Even
though most contents are ready for downloading, there are some contents
that might be ready, especially new technologies.
I did not register before or on
the starting date of this course. Can I still register?
- Yes.
You can register anytime before the class ends and as long as you
submit all your homework's before the deadline (2 weeks after the last
class), you are considered to be in the class.
I want to send
information on this course to my friends. Is there any text I can
send out?
Is this course free?
Why are you offering this course for free?
- This course was initially started to teach J2EE
Programming, which
was (and of course still is) a
highly sought-after expertise by employers, to unemployed
software
engineers in New England area in collaboration with New England Java Users Group (NEJUG).
- Please see how
this course got started
- If you want to make donations, please feel free to do so.
My paypal id is sang.shin@sun.com. But this is completely
voluntary.
If I take this
course again in the next session, should I resubmit all the homework's?
- No. You can just send
the homeworks you have not done since I keep all the homeworks
submitted for 2 years.
How do I submit homework's?
- "Where
to", "what files", and "how to" submit homework's are described as part
of the hands-on lab work. For example, for the class of "Web
Application Structure", the homework is specified at the end of
hands-on lab of the same topic.
What are the prerequisites and
where do I get more information on these prerequisites?
- 1 month Java programming experience.
What software and IDE
are we
going to use in this course?
Where are the weekly
homeworks?
- Each hands-on lab has
homework exercise at the end.
Where should I send homeworks?
Do I get a
certificate if I finish all the homework's?
- If you submitted all the homework's, you will be
given a certificate.
- The certificate has no affiliation with any
colleges, educational
institution, company. Instead, it is just my personal recognition
that
you have done your share of work, thus successfully finished the course.
- You will be noted as "Graduates of the course" in the class website. You can
see an example from another
free online class I teach.
- At the end of the course, I will ask you to send
me your full name in the subject line field
How do
I know the homework's I sent are received? Can I get some confirmation?
- If
your email with homework attachment is not bounced back, please assume
I received it. The scheme has been working for me for two years
with no problem.
- With the last
homework, I will ask people to submit their full name and Nationality
(or Country you want to represent) as described here.
Do I
get any responses from instructors regarding the quality of my
homework's?
- The homework's are
designed such that you know you have done your work or
not. In other words, you should not submit a homework
unless the work is done. If there is a vagueness in the homework
description, please post it to the class alias so that it can be
discussed and corrected by the instructors.
- Unless it is an
extremely unusual case, you will not get an individual response from
instructors indicating the quality of your individual homework.
This is more or less due to time constraint of the instructors.
Given that there are thousands of students taking this class, and
instructors are teaching this class as their spare time activity, there
is simply no way each homework can be reviewed/commented/corresponded
by instructors.
When is the deadline for
all homework's?
- The due date of the
all homeworks is 2 weeks after the last class of the current session so
you have plenty of time to submit your homeworks.
Can I resubmit a homework?
Can I take this course
without submitting homeworks?
- Yes, but you will not
get a certificate.
Class
alias usage guidelines
- The
class email alias was set up for attendees
to
post
questions,
share knowledge, and exchange ideas among themselves during the course
period. Attendees are strongly encouraged to post technical
questions, interesting articles, tools, sample programs or anything
that is relevant to the class.
What are ground
rules for posting questions to class email alias?
- When
you are posting a question, please make sure you've done
your share of work. Make sure you read the relevant
documentation, presentation slides, FAQ, and other postings before you
post your question.
- Also
please capture as much relevant information as
possible such as following
- trace of the exception
- screen output message of the failure
- environment variable settings
- OS platform you use
- Even
though the folks who usually answer questions
(including myself and Sean) are trying to address them as speedy and as
best
as they can, please understand that these folks are using their spare
time and resource to do these as voluntary activities. Please
also
note that answering questions like "I did this and somehow it doesn't
work" kind of questions are never easy to answer. Consequently
not all questions can be nor would be answered in timely manner.
- Please
ask questions that are relevant to the topics of the week
if possible so that we can have more focused discussions.
- If
you find any answers to the questions, please feel free to
post to the alias so that other people can benefit.
- I
know sometimes you want to send technical questions directly to me
(Sang Shin) and Sean Dockery but doing so is strongly discouraged due
to the following reasons:
- In
most cases, you will get faster responses by posting them to the class
alias. After all, that is what the community is all about. I
expect members to help each other on technical questions.
- I
personally cannot keep track of who sent what questions due to the
large number of emails I have to deal with. (I am sure many of you are
in the same boat.) Your questions posted on the class alias will remain
there so that they can answered at a later time by someone.
- In
general, myself and Sean are always and extremely stretched out in
terms of available time I have.
What are the
suggested netiquettes for posing to the class email alias?
- Please do not post a
simple "Thank you" note or "Hello" message to the class alias.
This class alias is subscribed by several thousand people so please be
aware that these messages are considered as noises by many people.
- Given that we are all
living in "instant messaging" age, it is not unreasonable to see folks
posting their messages using just lower case letters like following and
I know it is perfectly acceptable in instant messaging.
- "i write this with
only lower case letter i."
(Not recommended)
- But for posting
messages to an email alias where more than 2000 people are subscribing,
I would recommend everyone to follow a couple of guidelines if possible.
- Start a statement
with a capital letter like following.
- "I write this
with a capital letter I." (Recommended)
- Please do not use
short-hand.
- "u are my friend."
(Not recommended)
- "You are my friend."
(Recommended)
- It is generally a
good practice to remove irrelevant contents when you reply.
- Now having said that,
I know large percentage of the folks on this alias are not speaking
English as their first language (including myself - I speak Korean at
home.) Please don't feel intimidated in posting. Less than
perfect English grammar is perfectly acceptable.
What OS platform
can I use to take this course?
- Windows, Solaris X86,
Solaris Sparc, Linux, Mac OS
Can I use other IDE's
other than NetBeans? Why is this course designed with
NetBeans in mind?
- In theory, you could
use other IDE's other than NetBeans in this course.
Practically, it would be much easier for you to use NetBeans since most
of the hands-on labs are created with NetBeans in mind. It would
require minimum effort (less than 5 minutes) to learn NetBeans since we
are using very minimal features of NetBeans.
- The selection of
NetBeans
as an IDE of choice for this course is mainly due to its "best out of
the
box" experience
it provides for building Web applications, J2EE 1.4 applications, and
EJB 3.0 and Java EE 5 applications.
Do I have to read
all the emails on the class alias?
- No, you don't have to read all the emails in
order to proceed with this course. All the required materials are
going to be accessible from the class website.
If I choose not to
read postings on the class alias, can I unregister myself from the
class alias and can still take the class and submit homework's?
- Yes, you can.
But I would personally ask you to stay on the alias and change the
delivery option to "no email" since the class alias is how I keep track
of how many people have registered.
Are we expecting to
have this large number of postings on the class alias as we move on?
- A large number of
postings on a class alias indicates that we are building a very
successful community. So it is not a bad thing. Of course, the
quality of the postings should be such that people want to read them.
- It is very typical
there is a very large number of postings in the beginning of the a new
course simply because there are lots of newbie questions.
Things will settle down to reasonable levels as we, as a group, begin
to learn the best way to conduct the class.
Is the class email alias
moderated?
- Yes or no. I,
Sang Shin, as a primary moderator, turn the moderation on and off
depending on the circustances. In general, I leave moderation
turned off most of the time.