What type of learning environment do you do best in?

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I'm currently self-studying a cert and finding it abit difficult to self-study from a book tbh, its doable but think I do better in a classroom. Really not sure why either.. I recently took a computer course at college and would have sworn blind I had failed the exam, I was convinced I had failed spent a whole week worrying, but somehow passed with 98%. I have always been pretty lucky in exams I walk in a nervous wreck and walk out with top marks. Now I have a few mates who feel they do better when studying alone and not in the classroom, I would surely think being in a classroom would be easier as you have a physical person there teaching you and someone you can ask questions to and a structure that has been tried and tested.

 

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Have a read of my post - http://www.certforums.com/threads/entry-level-it-certifications-and-beyond.49085/ which describes the pro's and cons of both.

I have to admit I prefer classroom based training myself.

 

Have you tried CBT / MOOC ? Nice mix of classroom and home learning.

I think to really master something you have to spend some time on your own experimenting, reading, thinking, so ultimately you need to be able to self study to some degree. This often becomes more important the further you get into a subject.

Classrooms are nice for motivation, interaction, feedback, structured curated content, basically you get hand holding and spoon fed. Its very nice but having an expert on hand is expensive and if they aren't an expert it can be waste time. Often it will involve significant travel.

Generally lower level classes are easier to find and cheaper, so it makes sense starting out to take some tuition.

I'm lot less keen on exams than I used to be, must taken 80+ exams by now, I'm more inclined to see them as a waste time now.

 

Actually there are complaints that a number of exam vendors these days are just money grabbing rather than providing a decent exam, for example VMware's recent announcement that the VCAP exam's (DT and Cloud) retired on the day that they announced it didn't go down well with the industry.

 

Well computer based exams are particularly bad, but actually I meant all exams.
Mostly they seem designed to :-
1. Check you haven't cheated on your homework
2. See if you are good at memorising stuff
3. Rank you against your peer group
4. See if you can handle an artificial environment with pressure

Once you leave high school and If you're serious about a subject or profession for most people this becomes a bit irrelevant.

The surest test is actually doing the job to a high standard.

 

I prefer to have classroom based, as long as it's good quality. I just find it easier to get my head around complex issues/subjects when I have people to bounce off and have a conversation with in order to really get it to sink in and understand it.

That said I have self studied plenty and learned lots, so it is possible to learn in a multitude of ways but some I find take longer than others for me personally.

 

I always preferred for classroom training.....!