NJDOTNET

There has been an ongoing discussion in our subgroup about how best to utlize our time at the meetings. I'm gonna serve up my ideas and I'd love to hear everyone else's opinions:

I think the bulk of our learning time should be done at home. I do have a copy of 'the book' and I take notes and go through the labs etc. I'm thankful that the more advanced members of the study group have more or less lectured on the different topics during the last two meetings. However, I don't think it is fair to rely on them for what ultimately is 'my certification'. The book has a lot of information, resources, labs, and case scenarios to learn and reinforce the subject matter.

Some people have proposed that we should discuss our notes or complete labs together at the meetings. I don't agree with this. This falls within the realm of learning or reinforcing the material, which I believe should be performed at home. Does this mean that we are alone in these endeavors? No. I think Jess has setup a great resource for collaboration in this forum. We have access to the group all week to ask questions, discuss our notes, and even post code to get feedback.

Ok, so what do we actually do at the meeting? We test each other. That afterall is what we are studying for- a test. This is where we can detect any holes in our learning and target what we need to work on going forward. I believe testing each other is the best preparation for certification.

Time is one reason why I propose to do things this way. Todd said that studying this material in the shortest amount of time is preferable because retention is harder as more time passes. By putting more emphasis on our studies at home, we can minimize the amount of time it takes to cover the material.

I'll be honest. At times, I am overwhelmed with the amount of information that we have to cover. I don't have years of experience with .NET, but my goal is and has been from the start to get certified. I'd appreciate hearing how everyone else would like to approach the study group. How do you think we should use our time and resources? How can we better prepare for the exam? Thanks for your input and I'll see you Thursday!

Aaron,

I appreciate your feedback and candor.  Hopefully more people will do the same!

I've said it before, but I'll say it again - the thing that helps me the most is actually writing code - aka, doing the labs.  I've been involved in plenty of code reviews and found these immensely helpful as well, but these are reviews of code that's already been written...  I've never actually done a pair programming or a "real-time code review", but something tells me it's not going to be a good use of time considering how long it takes to write the code.  That said, bringing to the meetings - or posting here - the code for the labs and sample code you've completed at home and getting it reviewed may be a good idea and a source of help for a lot of people.  IMHO, code reviews help everyone involved become better developers; but going back to your primary concern, I'm not sure this will drive us (at least not directly) to our main goal: pass the exam.

From the start, I was hoping to have a lot more in the way of practice test resources available to everyone at the meetings.  I still intend to bring in my laptop (everyone else can feel free to do the same) and run the practice tests from the book on there for anyone who's interested in taking them.  My only problem with that is that this is something that can easily be done at home and doesn't usually spark group interaction, which is why we're meeting.  At this point, I'm thinking along the lines of something like a Jeopardy-type game, or flash cards, or some variation of that them - like you said, focusing on the questions.  Some way of seeing as many questions and correct answers (perhaps also quickly discussing why the wrong answers are wrong) as possible in the time we have.

Regardless of how we do it, I definitely agree that focusing on the questions themselves instead of diving deep into the subject matter is going to be much more efficient and get us to the finish line (an exam certification) a lot faster.
 

Anyone and everyone else - please feel free to speak up and offer suggestions on how we can make this more effective!