IT-230 Linux Administration
From Following Along to Working Alone
Every topic in this course is demonstrated, then practiced together, then worked alone. The materials below support each stage of that gradual release of responsibility.
Accent colors add variety to the material
The site and slides utilize accent colors inspired by the Adwaita design language. Choosing an accent color here changes this page and its examples. Every accent is tested against every background it is used on to ensure WCAG 2.1 AA compliance.
I Do the instructor demonstrates
The class meets an idea for the first time, with the instructor leading. These are the choices that decide whether it lands.
Deconstruction: show the whole thing, then take it apart
Left whole, an unfamiliar command gets copied rather than understood. This slide shows the finished command first, then names each part in turn, so attention lands on one piece at a time instead of all of them at once. When that student later meets a variation they have never seen, they can work out what changed rather than start over.
Theory in words, theory applied
An abstract principle is easy to state and hard to use. Here the same idea arrives twice: once as the rule itself, and once as a diagram of that rule applied to a specific case. The sentence is what a student can repeat back. The diagram is what they will picture when they meet the situation for real.
Built to be bookmarked
Students return to some material dozens of times and meet other material once. This slide is the returning kind, so it is a table rather than prose: comparing a handful of machines across the same few attributes is a scanning task, and scanning is what tables are for. Because every slide is its own web page, a student can bookmark this one directly, which is not true of a PowerPoint slide, a handout, or an attachment.
We Do the class works through it together
The class runs the same workflow on their own lab machines, with the instructor leading.
Practice while the support is still there
The instructor works through an exercise and the class works through it at the same time, on their own machines. A student who gets something wrong finds out immediately, while there is still someone to ask.
The same exercise is open on every student's screen. Typing each command out is worth doing, and most do. Pasting from the written exercise is the alternative, trading keystroke practice for attention spent on what the command actually does.
A room full of people typing is the part that does not fit on a web page. Below is a recording of one of these demonstrations. Recordings are really made for students returning to an exercise alone, which is the next section.
You Do the student works alone
The lab is finished after class, on the student's own time, and this is where support usually disappears.
The material is still there
“I need to see that command run again” has no good answer in most courses. In this course the demonstrations are provided as a written exercise and recorded in Asciinema a student can copy a command straight out of either one rather than retyping it from a screenshot or Zoom recording.
Each presentation is also published as a PDF for students studying offline.
Knowing what to study next
A student working alone has to decide what to do before the next class, during it, and afterwards. Guessing wastes the time they have.
Each week is laid out in the order a student meets it: what to read beforehand, what the class will cover, and what to do once they are on their own. Every topic records the chapters it aligns to, stored beside the slide it describes so the two cannot drift apart.
Week 08
Midterm Exam
- In class Meeting Agenda Midterm Exam
- After class · Required Lab Assignments Complete the lab assignments in this week’s Canvas module.
- 16Red Hat Academy chapters covered
- 14RHCSA Cert Guide chapters covered
At every stage true whether a student is watching, practicing, or alone
These hold at every stage rather than belonging to one of them.
Accessible in every phase
A student using a screen reader, zooming to 200 percent, or working entirely by keyboard should get the same material as everyone else, not a worse copy of it.
- WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the minimum target for the site, slides and every student-facing document.
- Automated accessibility tests run against every build of this site.
- Pages are checked at both a wide and a 320 pixel width, so nothing is silently cut off.
- Color is reinforcement only. Meaning always carries a label, a symbol, or structure as well.
- Recorded demonstrations are replayable text rather than video, so they can be paused, read by assistive technology, and copied from.
Where students already are
Students live in Canvas. Materials that live somewhere else are materials that do not get found, and the lab assignment that ends each week is itself a Canvas assignment.
Every week also produces a Canvas-ready page carrying that week's agenda, its exercises, and links that go straight to the relevant topic rather than to the front of a deck. The instructor pastes it in. Every destination is checked when it is produced, so a link that is not a plain secure address is refused rather than published.
Explore the course
These materials are maintained independently for IT-230 at St. Charles Community College. The college and Red Hat do not operate or endorse this site.