[Info-vax] Radical command line suggestion

[IanD]

On Saturday, March 21, 2015 at 4:02:26 AM UTC+11, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> In article <mehhe7$7id$1 at dont-email.me>,
> 	Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes:
> > On 2015-03-20 15:42:27 +0000, Bill Gunshannon said:
> > 
<snip?
> 
> Someone mentioned MOOC here earlier.  There is probably nothing stopping
> some of our experts from creating Online Courses about VMS.  As a matter
> of fact, it might be very interesting to see how many people (and who)
> sign up for them.  Might even find a major institution who would host it
> for exactly that demographic data.  (Like Stanford who seem to be getting
> into this MOOC stuff ful throttle!)
> 
> One thing is for sure.  If you hide your lamp under a bushel you can be
> sure no one will ever know it is there.
> 
> bill
> 
> -- 
> Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
> billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
> University of Scranton   |
> Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>

That would have been myself, under a different posting name (but perhaps others might have mentioned the MOOC idea too)

I posted it because I signed up for a linux foundation course pushed through the EDX MOOC system

It's fairly bland but it's self-paced now and has been updated already to make it better. It's advantage is that it's structured and is from the linux foundation and that it's free, oh, did I mention, it's for free! :-)

I notice now that MS have started pushing some of their content for beginners through the EDX MOOC system as well. Interesting.

https://www.edx.org/course/programming-c-microsoft-dev204x#.VQ0Wo46UdYx

The war is heating up. Learning cost is being driven downwards and MOOCS are leading the way in driving down education costs (I have followed MOOCS for a while now). I'm surprised at how the likes of Microsoft are now starting to push their content through the MOOC system and for free, I didn't think they would get on-board this early. Higher education has already embraced it and now the push downwards to middle level education has started as well

Yes, real productivity in using tools such as an IDE is maximised through actual classroom courses but I also think these will change to become more hybrid based (most online, some class)

This is why I think offering introductory VMS courses and expecting people to cough up 1000's of dollars isn't going to fly - sorry if that offends some folk. 
A MOOC would be better to get people interested and they are traditionally free unless you want to attach some type of certification to it. A properly designed MOOC is not that easy to do. The constant feedback HAS to be acted upon and incorporated as a feedback system for constant improvement otherwise the course dies a quick death. 

People will not pay money to get acquainted with something on a cursory / inquisitive nature (well, I won't, I don't have that much money to burn). Once they are committed, then that's a different story, you can charge for more advanced courses as they will pay for productivity (They will not pay just for education alone unless there is a productivity improvement forthcoming)

It's like when the Hobbyist program got going. I was so excited until I found how hard it was to get hold of the media - what a letdown that was. Here you go, here's a free program to get you going in VMS but wait, you cannot download the media. wtf. Please pay $30 for a CD that doesn't have the latest copies of the software on it anyhow (I'm not knocking the people charging but HP for the framework that required the charge to have to be made in the first place). 
At least the current program was a bit better, you could download the software but even so, it's still way too difficult for those just wanting to find out and have a bit of a play around quickly

The linux foundation MOOC, as I said, is rather bland. Its basically static content (think powerpoint like) BUT it's out there and it's out there for FREE and people are enrolling

A properly designed introduction to VMS MOOC that was interactive (and as someone brilliantly suggested, included a downloaded virtual VMS machine to play with) would do wonders for getting people at least to have a look at VMS. Where I work, even people 30+ years old don't know what VMS is, they think it's something like unix *sigh*. People under that age range have never even heard of it!

Incorporating the feedback from a VMS MOOC could then be fed back and used to modernise all the VMS doco. Video, Audio IS the new medium whether we like it or not. Content on your mobile tablet that can be saved for offline viewing would be a minimum level to pitch for in my opinion.
It is very time consuming to produce good quality multimedia training, I doubt VSI have the time. Maybe this could be open sourced or community funded ?

I'm going to re quote your awesome signatutre because I think it's so pertinent to VMS and it's future

> One thing is for sure.  If you hide your lamp under a bushel you can be
> sure no one will ever know it is there.
> 
> bill
> 
> -- 
> Bill Gunshannon          

*I wish this crappy Google Groups had things like bolding etc