Overall, my wife found this course somewhat disappointing, but she said it could be considered barely acceptable by the thinnest of threads.
The next (and last) two courses my wife took at New Horizons were the (922) "Supporting MS WinNT 4.0 - Core Technologies", and (689) "Supporting MS NT Server 4.0 - Enterprise Technologies" courses. Both were taught by the same instructor, named Dale.
Where to begin? With the fact that the classes started up to a half-hour late every single day? Or the long breaks that cut further into the classroom time? Or perhaps with the fact that the instructor incorrectly set up the computers [1] that both my wife and her partner were to use? Better still, shall we discuss the power failure which occurred early in the class one day, which prompted the instructor to dismiss the class and, rather than reschedule or add a day, try to cram the 4 remaining days of learning into 3?
No, let's start elsewhere. Let's start with competence.
According to New Horizons, Dale is a Microsoft Certified Trainer. I have no doubt that he is. But what is a Microsoft Certified Trainer? It's a person who has passed Microsoft's requirements to conduct classes. Period. Is Dale an MCSE holder himself, as a reasonable person would expect people who are conducting MCSE courses to be? According to Dale, he is not.
Has he worked outside of the classroom, administering an NT domain, working with NT servers, configuring or installing NT, setting up user accounts, DHCP services, print services? Working with hubs, routers, cabling and NICs? Troubleshooting problems? Has he done ANYTHING outside of the classroom which pertains to NT?
According to Dale, the answer is once again no.
Q: Well c'mon now, he's a certified trainer, right? How bad could it be?
A: A good question, and your skepticism shows you to be a thinking individual, and a fine looking one at that.
I don't know if Dale is a whirling dervish of training competence when he is teaching Word or Publisher or Access. Perhaps he is. He's been teaching at New Horizons for three years (once again, according to Dale), but only recently started teaching the MCSE courses.
I do know that when teaching the MCSE courses that my wife paid for, he read directly from the book, and ONLY read from the book. He did not offer anything in the way of personal experience, and not much in the way of explanation of what he was reading, either from the perspective of passing the test or how it works in the real world.
How bad could it be, you ask? Does $6500.00 sound like a fair price to have a man read a book to you five nights a week for a few weeks? If so, please email me, and I'll read you whatever you want for that price. Really. Seriously. ANYTHING. From Dr. Suess to the US Tax code, I'm ready willing and able to read it to you five nights a week for a few weeks for the paltry sum of $6500.00 (There will be an inconvenience surcharge for foreign language books and romance novels.)
| [1] The two machines were to be the BDC and a resource server. He set them up as an additional PDC (you can't have two PDCs) and NT workstation. There is no way to convert workstation to server without reinstalling, and placing two PDCs on a single domain is a nightmare waiting to happen. |
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