What’s on our E-Learning Roadmap for Developers?

One of the reasons I started this blog in the first place was to create an avenue where I can directly communicate with you. I want this communication to be a two-way street with both me telling you about new products that we are shipping, plans for our curriculum, and plans for our e-Learning experience itself. In return I really hope to get your feedback and ideas regarding any of the above. This blog is your chance to directly impact our direction in E-Learning.

So far I've done a reasonably good job informing you about what's been shipping for developers. Now I'd like to take things to the next level and give you a view of what we are planning for the future. Howard has already been doing a great job of this through his various posts about Certification.

Below you'll find the list of titles that are currently in development. You'll notice in the SharePoint content below I've also listed our IT Pro courses as they have relevant pre-requisite training.

What's shipping soon of interest to developers?

Below you'll find the list of titles that are currently in development. You'll notice in the SharePoint content below I've also listed our IT Pro courses as they have relevant pre-requisite training.

Collection 5403: Implementing Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 (12 hours) – IT Pro (Shipped)

In this online learning collection composed of six courses, you will gain the knowledge and skills to deploy a Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 solution. The courses in this collection also help prepare you for certification exam 70-631.

Collection 5385: Developing Solutions with Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 and Visual Studio® 2005 (12 hours) - Dev (Just Shipped)

In this 12-hour collection you will learn to build custom Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 solutions. Topics covered within the collection include the SharePoint Object Model, Security, Navigation and Layout. These courses will help prepare you for the 70-541 TS exam.

Collection 5392: Developing and Extending Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 with Visual Studio® 2005 (12 hours) - Dev (Shipping Soon)

In this 12-hour collection you will learn to build custom Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 solutions. Topics covered within the collection include creating custom web parts, working with event receivers, as well as site features, services and definitions. These courses will help prepare you for the 70-541 TS exam.

Collection 5404: Implementing Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 (12 hours) – IT Pro (Shipped)

In this 12-hour collection you will learn how to implement Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Topics covered within the course include Installation, Enterprise Content Management, BI and Search as well as Deployment. These courses will help prepare you for the 70-630 TS exam.

Collection 6071: Developing Solutions with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and Visual Studio® 2005 (12 hours) - Dev

In this 12-hour course you will learn how to develop customized Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 solutions. Topics covered within the course includes Enterprise Content Management, Single-Sign On, and Infopath and Excel services. Additionally the course will cover the Business Data Catalog, Search and Audience Targeting. These courses will help prepare you for exam 70-542

Clinic 3402: ASP.NET for PHP Developers - Introduction to ASP.NET (2 hrs) - Dev

In this 2-hour clinic you will learn about ASP.NET as a web development platform and how it compares to PHP. You will learn about features including Server Controls, Master Pages, Profiles. Additionally you will also learn about Visual Web Developer Express, a free tool for building dynamic web sites.

Workshop 3403: ASP.NET for PHP Developers - Using Visual Web Developer Express (2 hrs) - Dev

In this 2-hour workshop you will see ASP.NET and Visual Web Developer Express in action as you develop an ASP.NET web application. You will see how in ASP.NET you can leverage powerful features including layout, personalization, validation, and data-binding with little or no code.

What's in our future plans for 2007 / 2008?

Below is our list of tentative titles that we're looking at. Nothing you see below is set in stone. The good thing about that is that there's still time for us to change this plan based on your feedback. The bad thing is that there's not a guarantee that any of this content will actually get built. J Also, the descriptions are tentative, so it's entirely possible I may have missed something.

Collection TBD: Essential UI development with WPF and Visual Studio Orcas (18 hrs) - Dev

In this 18-hour collection developers will learn the fundamentals of developing WPF applications. The courses will cover topics including XAML, layout, styles, templates, and data-binding. These courses will help you prepare for the WPF TS Exam.

Collection TBD: Advanced UI development using WPF and Visual Studio Orcas (12 hrs) - Dev

In this 12-hour collection developers will learn how to use advanced features of WPF. The courses will cover animations, two and three dimensional graphics, triggers, and working with the application object model. These courses will help you prepare for the WPF TS Exam.

Collection TBD: Essential service-oriented development using WCF and Visual Studio Orcas (18 hrs) - Dev

In this 18-hour collection you will learn the fundamentals of developing WCF services. The courses will cover designing Services, Bindings, Transports and Contracts. In addition you will also learn about Service behaviors and Service hosting. These courses will help you prepare for the WCF TS Exam.

Collection TBD: Advanced service-oriented development using WCF and Visual Studio Orcas (12 hrs) - Dev

In this 12-hour collection you will learn how to use the advanced features of WCF. The courses will cover Message and Transport level security, creating custom policy, advanced transport configuration and creating custom transports. The courses will also cover asynchronous service invocation, using svchost and the service trace viewer. The courses will help you prepare for the WCF TS Exam.

Collection TBD: Essential workflow development using WF and Visual Studio Orcas (18 hrs) - Dev

In this 18-hour collection you will learn the fundamentals of developing applications with Windows Workflow Foundation. The courses will cover creating sequential and state machine workflows, workflow activities, work properties, and using the workflow scheduling and persistence services. Additionally you will also learn how to debug a workflow, and work with the workflow runtime. The courses will help you prepare for the WF TS Exam.

Collection TBD: Advanced workflow development using WF and Visual Studio Orcas (12 hrs) - Dev

In this 12-hour collection you will learn how to use the advanced features of WF. The courses will cover Creating Custom Activities and Designers, Using the Transaction, Tracking, and Data Exchange services. The courses will also cover how to integrate with Workflows with WCF. The courses will help you prepare for the WF TS Exam.

Collection TBD: Essential Web development with ASP.NET vNext and Visual Studio Orcas (18 hrs) - Dev

In this 18-hour collection developers will learn about the fundamental features of ASP.NET vNext. The courses will cover topics ranging from web forms, validators, and master pages to configuration, profile and authentication services. Additionally the collection will cover the basics of using ASP.NET AJAX.

Advanced Web development with ASP.NET vNext and Visual Studio Orcas (12 hrs) - Dev

In this 12-hour collection developers will learn how to use advanced capabilities of ASP.NET vNext. The courses will cover topics including custom ASP.NET control development, advanced web configuration, building custom ASP.NET AJAX controls and extenders, and creating your own authentication providers. The course will also include coverage of asynchronous page processing.

Data-binding using ADO.NET LINQ and Visual Studio Orcas (12 hrs) - Dev

In this 12-hour collection developers will learn how to use the new Language Integrated Query features of Visual Studio Orcas. Topics covered include LINQ, XLINQ and DLINQ Query syntax. The course will also cover lamda expressions and core LINQ interfaces.

Developing using Visual Studio Team Test Orcas (12 hrs) - Dev

In this 12-hour collection developers will learn about using the testing features of Visual Studio Team Test Orcas. Topics covered include unit and load testing, web tests, and code coverage. Additionally the course will introduce developers to the basics of Test Driven development.

Implementing Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (12 hrs) - Dev

This 12-hour collection teaches developers how to install and configure Visual Studio Team Foundation Server within their organizations. This course will help you prepare for exam 70-510 TS.

WHEW, So there you have it, basically our whole roadmap as of the present. Here's the type of feedback I am looking for:

  1. Do you think the general roadmap makes sense, or are we missing the mark?
  2. Is there anything missing or unnecessary?
  3. Which collections are the MOST important for us to build?
  4. Does the number of hours feel right for the content that is going to be covered?
  5. Anything else constructive regarding our plans.

Let me know what you think….it won't fall on deaf ears……