how do you learn

And we’ve built live training programs both online and in-person that allow people to learn in whatever way is best for them.. In the past year, we’ve introduced live online training,

How Do You Learn?

Learning isn’t a one-shot process: take the course, pass an exam, and get out You learn by interacting with instructors and students,

by assessing your progress, and using that to plan your next steps

It’s an ongoing feedback loop that involves everyone in the classroom (whether the classroom is virtual or physical)

At O’Reilly, we’ve thought a lot about how people learn And we’ve

built live training programs (both online and in-person) that allow

people to learn in whatever way is best for them We have built

learning programs that work.

Learning is social

O’Reilly Media has always been a learning company When we began to publish

books in the mid-80s, our editorial guidance for authors was to write as if they were

“a friend looking over the reader’s shoulder, providing wise and experienced advice.”

In 2016, we’re about much more than books We’ve long had instructional video and

conferences In the past year, we’ve introduced live online training, in addition to live

in-person training at conferences and other locations But the same standard

applies: we want the people who learn with us to feel like they have an expert

looking over their shoulders and providing seasoned advice

How do we do that? It starts with realizing that learning isn’t just a one-way

experience When we analyzed conference attendance and early online courses, we

saw that people participate as groups More than 50% attend our online courses as

teams People don’t attend courses as teams just so they can hang out together

during breaks; they attend as teams so they can learn from each other, apply their

new knowledge to their particular situation, and bring that knowledge back to their

co-workers When a team attends training, the group learns much more than sum

of the individual experiences

Furthermore, we discovered that teams attend to hear what other teams ask For

example, another group attending may be further along their journey toward

streaming analytics; they may have already encountered issues your team won’t hit

for another six months So learning isn’t just about what you need to know now, or

what your teacher thinks you need to know now: it’s about interaction with other

learners and their problems It’s about taking advantage of other learnings to

discover where you’ll be in 6 months or a year

O’Reilly’s live training events – whether online or in person –

offer instructor-led, hands-on courses, with an emphasis on

the social aspects of learning That’s in stark contrast to

typical training products based on pre-recorded classes Each

course is led by an expert practitioner in the subject,

someone working in industry They’ve seen what works and

what doesn’t – instead of just memorizing a syllabus and slide

deck These instructors guide you through hands-on course

materials and they’re available to help answer your questions

at any point And you’re able to interact with other students,

learning from their experience

Learning is a feedback loop

You and your team have just finished a course How do you

know that you’ve learned? Assessment is one of the trickiest

areas in education Most “assessment” in the industry

devolves into memory quizzes But simply quizzing students

on whether they’ve memorized the appropriate answers

doesn’t tell you anything about learning

O’Reilly integrates assessment into almost all aspects of our

learning experiences We focus on formative assessment – in

other words, providing useful feedback – rather than

“quantifying students.” Our work on computable content

opens the door for live coding as part of assessment We

don’t give quizzes that test whether you can remember the

right answer: we can give actual coding assignments, and evaluate learners’ solutions

This kind of assessment goes hand-in-hand with instructor feedback: our instructors can see students’ weaknesses and can help them through tough spots, rather than just assign a grade And we can recommend content for future learning, with full knowledge of the students’ strengths and

weaknesses If a student is weak in some areas, additional background may be helpful If a student is particularly strong, she may be able to skip ahead All this is part of our

subscription-based learning platform

Offerings: What do you want to learn?

You can have the best teachers and teaching methods in the world; it isn’t worth anything if they aren’t teaching courses that are relevant to your needs In the next two months, our live training calendar includes courses on data science, design, operations, security, software architecture, programming, and business Topics range from design for the Internet of Things to programming in Python and distributed services with Spark We have courses for beginners, to help them build the broad

structural literacy that will help them to learn more; we have courses for experts, to help them drill down into specialized topics And that’s just the start: we’re still building out the calendar

All of our courses feature a learning promise.

That’s a “Roles to Goals” description of the intended

audience, what prerequisites are required, what you’ll learn,

why it matters, and how you’ll apply it

That’s how we approach learning at O’Reilly

We recognize that learning is social, and we’ve built a

platform that allows instructor and students to interact with

each other We’ve engaged instructors who are expert

practitioners in their fields, and who have hard-earned

wisdom to share with their students: they’re familiar with the

best (and worst) practices, the trade-offs, the gotchas that

can drive a student crazy We’ve built tools that make

assessment part of a feedback loop, so instructors can

“invert the classroom” and focus on providing help where

it’s most needed And we’re building a rich program of

in-person learning events: you can attend online, at

conferences, at our Boston training center, or at other

venues

Shared learning: that’s what we do, and we’d like

to share that with you.

Our Learning Promise for the Online Course Building Distributed

Pipelines for Data Science Using Kafka, Spark, and Cassandra