Tutorials overview
What?
Tutorials are lessons that take you, the reader, by the hand through a series of steps to complete a project of some kind. They are learning-oriented.
Say what?
They are a matter of craft. Skill. It’s knowledge, but it’s practical knowledge, not theoretical. Complex or advanced, basic or well known.
What they do
They introduce. They educate. They learn.
Answers the question
"Can you teach me to...?"
Oriented to
Learning. Let's begin. Let's dive in. With teacher guidance. They serve the need of the user @study. They provide an enjoyable, successful learning experience.
Purpose
- to allow you, the newcomer, to get started
- to help you, a beginner, achieve basic competence
- to show you, the learner, that you can be successful
- to turn you, new learner, into a user
Form
A lesson, learning how rather than learning that. By providing exercises that are:
- meaningful
- successful
- logical
- usefully complete
Analogy
Teaching someone how to cook. Enjoy. Gain confidence. Repeat.
My responsability
It’s not easy being a teacher. I'm responsable for...
- what you are to learn
- what you will do in order to learn it
- your success
Your responsability
- there is no responsibility on you to learn, understand or remember
- only follow the instructions as closely as you can
- and be attentive
Approach
- I'll try not to teach
- I'll get you started
- I'll follow a carefully-managed path, starting at a given point and working to a conclusion
- I'll familiarize
- in a contrived setting
- I'll eliminate the unexpected
- and be explicit about basic things
- I'll teach general skills and principles
- by providing the big picture and setting expectations
- and by ensuring results
- I'll make the tutorials repeatable and safe
- describe concrete steps, not abstract steps
- offer minimum explanation
- and ignore options and alternatives
The problem.
- tutorials are difficult to do well
- and time consuming
- with lots of revisions
- and I, the teacher, am not present