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3. ( Self Study | Mentored
Study | Group Study | Hybrid
Study )
There are three different ways to use the MOST's course materials and volunteers, but in many cases an individual will use a hybrid approach while taking any specific course.
The materials associated with all of The MOST's courses are designed to be suitable for self-study. Most of the lessons have specific source code available which illustrates the points covered in the lesson. This source code may be used as an example, or even used 'as is' in YOUR applications. Taking a MOST course exclusively via self-study is easy: just access our site for the materials that will be useful to you and study/use them in whatever way you learn best when studying on your own. We have a variety of supporting reference materials available throughout the site that may be used to augment your self-study activities.
The materials which were/are produced by The MOST's contributors for The MOST's courses are all placed in the public domain by their respective authors. You are free to download these materials, or reproduce them in any form that will facilitate your individual use of them for your personal training purposes. You may NOT use these materials to provide paid training without written permission from the original author(s).
To access the associated materials for a specific course, see the course listing, select the desired course from those available, and follow the links contained in the associated course description.
It is possible to enlist the aid of a mentor to ease the occassional problem that a student encounters while attempting to learn exclusively by self-study. A person taking a course via mentored-study should expect to perfom MOST of their work as if they were taking the course via self-study, but with the option to call on a mentor for specific questions. For this reason, the instructions above for Self Study also apply to mentored-study.
The MOST maintains a membership listing that includes pointers to individuals that have committed to working with our classes. Some of them are also willing to perform 1:1 mentoring activities, although in general this is the exception. Anyone who wishes to work individually with a mentor to take a course may access that list and find a mentor for the associated technology who has explicitly stated that he/she is willing to work 1:1 with individuals. It is also possible to find separate mentors for different subsets of the course. The student is expected to work this out for her/himself, using this site to help identify potential mentors.
A person taking a course via mentored study will work out the specific details of how he/she will interact with each mentor on an individual basis. Students are expected to remember that these mentors are volunteers, and treat their stated limits on availability accordingly.
Most of the courses offered by The MOST are small in scope and perfectly suited to self-study. Some courses (most notably, the Mac OS Core course) have such a range and depth of materials that most first-time students will have difficulty covering the material without getting clarifications at various points. For these courses, The MOST will provide a focussed mailing list for the use of the students to ask questions about the course materials.
When we started The MOST, we had envisioned having formal, scheduled classes for the courses, but quickly learned that the students for the pilot class were at widely different starting skill levels and would all progress at vastly different rates because of this (and because of their individual availability of time to work on the course). We now have an open enrollment policy for any of our courses that DO support the "Group Study" option. This means that you don't need to wait for the "start" of the next class to join in, but it also means that the students in any group study course will usually all be at different places in the course.
Although we call this "group study", each lesson is to be studied individually by the students at their own pace. No 'lectures' will be presented as part of normal courses. Usually, all of the students for a specific course will not be available simultaneously and most of the students will be at different places in the curriculum at any specific time. All MOST materials are provided with the understanding that the students will attempt self-study of the lesson materials, and then bring questions to mentors about any parts of the material that are unclear. In group study mode, these questions will be asked in the appropriate MOST mailing list, and all participants in the class are free to answer the question, or pursue further clarification of the answer to enhance their own understanding of the issue.
There wouldn't be much point in calling this group study if there wasn't any way to act as a group. The MOST has a number of facilities available to us to facilitate communication among the course participants. Most courses will have their own mailing list, and this should be the PRIMARY channel for communication among the participants. NOTE: Please include the lesson number in the subject line of any question that you post to help the other students and the mentors know which area the subject relates to. When mentors and/or students in a class wish to participate in an actual 'live' group discussion, The MOST has a special purpose tools which was donated by its author for use by our students: Co-motion.
Co-motion allows multiple users to simultaneously discuss multiple separate issues in real time. the tool stores a record of all discussions, and has a 'voting' mechanism to help in brainstorming sessions. [NOTE: This tool will not work for you if you are behind a firewall]. Details on the use of Co-motion will be posted at a later time.
Students will come and go in a group study course (see Hybrid Study). There are NO limits to the number of changes to your enrollment/drop out status, but all students ARE expected to submit membership information for posting to the site (at LEAST your name and email address). We also ask that you verify this information every two months or so to help us keep the site current.
After we get some of the courses fully defined, we plan to reproduce the materials using the TopClass courseware, but this is for the future and we haven't researched this very thoroughly yet.
Each person's needs and availability are unique. The MOST attempts to provide a flexible set of self-study resources and knowledgeable volunteers, but each student is fully responsible to determine how best to make use of those resources for her/himself. It is probably true that most of the persons who use the facilities of The MOST will utilize a hybrid of the three methods defined above to learn the MacOS through The MOST.
A student may cover some of the material for some specific course by self-study, but become bogged down at some point. At that point, the student may contact a mentor for the area of difficulty and arrange for some assistance. Or, the student may decide to join a group-study session to participate in email discussions on an area that they find particularly difficult.
Students are permitted to join a course and subsequently stay inactive for an extended period of time. We know how time availability varies, and don't expect you to 'drop out' just because you can't get to your lessons for a few months, but we DO ask you to keep your membership information current at least every two months.
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Copyright
© 1996, 1997, 1998. Last Update to This Page:
1998/04/24
This Page Maintained by: radar
pangaean * * * Original Author: radar
pangaean
The MOST web site is built and maintained
by the voluntary efforts/donations of our members.