As you might know I have recently changed employers. I am now working for ERE Media and they are strong supporters of continuing education which I love. I just finished taking my first course over at Oreilly School and I must say that I am pleased with the course. The first course that I took was a “brush up” course in Linux administration (Linux/Unix 1: The Unix file system). I know the basics of Linux and this course actually did teach me some things.

At first I was a bit skeptical about the on-line courses that they offer. The main bonus was that it was not “led” by an instructor like most of the courses I have attended on-line. When I say that I mean you do not have to be there to attend the course at a set time during the day. You get to choose when you login and do the reading and assignments. The instructor(s) will login and grade your performance based on Objectives and Quizzes that they provide for you.

In this course there are 19 lessons which you can see in the course syllabus. I plan to take the other 3 system administration classes but first I am going to take the client side web development courses. What is cool about Oreilly School is that when you complete a set of courses such as the system administration courses you will get a certificate from the University of Illinois.

I think the best part of this entire setup that Oreilly School has is the fact that you do not have to sit down at a certain time to do the work, also there is NO time-limit on when you have to complete a course by. You could theoretically start a course and take 6 months or a year to complete it. There is one downfall to what they offer. You have to pay lab fee’s while taking the course. I think that this should be included in the cost of the course. They should not force you to tack that onto the cost of the course. The lab fee’s are pretty cheap at $9.95 per month, however if you take one of the system admin courses you have to pay another $9.95 per month because you get access to a root server. This is all automated so why should you have to pay the extra fee’s like this? The courses are cheap compared to others that you can find on the Internet but these will get you interacting with the Objectives and Quizzes.

The only thing I can think that the Oreilly School could do to improve this service is to add a 24 x 7 telephone support line so you don’t have to wait upwards of 1-8 hours from a response. If you contact them during normal business hours you tend to get a response faster, however if you email them after hours it will take some time. My guess is they only have 1-2 people working overnight to answer questions, etc.

Overall I rate this service an A and look forward to taking the other courses that are waiting for me.