Minimum course length for RH sys admin I and II courses

[Bill]

Does anyone have an opinion on how well Sysadmin I and II courses run in 8 week versus 16 week formats? Our College is considering moving to a predominantly 8 week system and my peers and I have some concerns about "cramming" the content into 8 weeks.

[TobinShields]

Hey there, I know this is digging up an old post but I am just now becoming a little more active. I can tell you that I am able to barely fit the Sysadmin I and II courses into 10 weeks. It comes out to basically having to read through 3 'chapters' a week. Any more than that and I think it would be too much. 

[deoliver]

Hi! We teach the RH Sys Admin I course right after teaching a Linux Essentials (NDG) in a virtual environment.  The 124 portion we do in the 2nd 8 weeks using NDG's NetLab Appliance to allow VM access.  (It's pretty fast paced.)

We teach the RH Sys Admin II & III in the same semester (16 total weeks) as 8 weeks each.  It's pretty fast paced, but they usually get the hang of things.  Also, with doing the labs, back to back, almost daily, the college-age students seem to retain things pretty well.

I am teaching the Linux Essentials & RH Sys Admin I course this semester.  One section is almost all college-age students while the other one is almost all high school students who are attending in a cohort environment (Early College).  My co-instructor, Abe Flores has the college-age folks and I have the Early College cohort with a couple of college students and CCP (high schoolers from regular HS campus attending courses in the diploma program.)  Once we get through this semester, I can give you some more feedback as to comparing retention and capabilities.

[TobinShields]

Hey there--that's an interesting pairing: the NDG Linux course plus Sysadmin I, and then the second course is Sysadmin II and III. How has that worked for you? 

[Tracy_Baker]

We currently teach SysAdmin I (RH124) and II (RH134) each in 8 weeks (16 weeks total). SysAdmin III (RH254) is 16 weeks.

Each class, which is lecture+lab, meets once a week for 3.5 hours. That's 28 hours seat time for RH124/134 and 56 for RH254.

Most of my RH124 students know literally nothing about Linux - and have never used to the command prompt. This makes thing difficult for many.

In addition, I've made the classes more rigorous (harder). I've re-written all of the end-of-chapter labs so that they no longer tell the student how to do the lab (what commands to use, etc.). As an academic institution, I needed something I could use to reasonably assess their progress.

Most weren't learning anything other than copy 'n' paste with the original labs. (Before I did the rewrites, I once had a RH134 student come to me and ask me what cd does...)

My Red Hat classes are now generally considered the most difficult IT-oriented classes that we offer. The trade off is, the students know what they're doing when they complete them.

As a result, I am offering RH124 and RH134 classes in 16-week formats beginning this fall (32 week total). We will be meeting twice a week for 1.5 hours. Tuesday will be content delivery, Thursday will be labs.

[MikeFuszner]

Would you be willing to share your rewrite of the labs?