Yesterday was my first day as a Teachers Assistant at BCIT.  This semester I’m helping out with the COMP 2870 - Basic ASP.NET course.

I really paid attention during my first session, last night, to the student’s questions and issues.  I think their insight into the development process, the IDE, ASP.NET, and .NET itself is a real eye opener for me.  As an MVP in this space I come to the table with a long history with the product and a whole bunch of assumptions based around my past experience. By observing this group I know I will be able to pick up some ideas and learn from them as well. 

Some thoughts that I had during the course…

The instructor brought up Coding Standards right off the bat.  I loved this idea.  It is one of the more important skills that new comers need to pick up on.  Get into the habit of doing things right.  One thing I would add is a point to the FXCop application.  

The instructor briefly went over the new language changes, and I think it would be wise to add in a few online resources for the students to do their own research. 

Generics: http://www.15seconds.com/issue/031024.htm

Iterators: http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2004/06/07/liberty.html

Partial Classes: http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/22603

More here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7cz8t42e(en-US,VS.80).aspx

The instructor also showed us the Object Browser within the IDE.  I think it would also be beneficial for the students to also learn about .NET Reflector.

That’s all my notes for now.  Next week I will try to take more notes to post.

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