Workshop 8 - Ruby on Rails Workshops Report and Evaluation

Topic objectives

Upon the completion of this workshop, developers or managers should be able to:

• Identify and evaluate the Ruby on Rails workshop series
• Think critically and analytically about what you knew before and after the experiences
• Share and post your Report and Evaluation with peers via the subject forum.

Evaluation and Report

Please answer each question in this evaluation section. In your answer, please consider content/topics presented and the technologies and teaching strategies used during the Ruby on Rails Workshops. Results will be collated and used to modify the workshop series.
This form is just a format guide to you evaluation and report. Thank you for your time to complete workshop 8.

1. List what you consider to be the three strengths of Ruby on Rails workshop series.

• Interesting topic. The Ruby on Rails application framework is great and fun to work with.
  
  
• The Learning Rails podcasts. I found these podcasts very well presented and covered a lot of topics.
  
  
• The Rails Space book which I really enjoyed following. It is 500+ pages though and I would have preferred having the actual book rather than it being an online reading.
  

2. List what you consider to be the three weaknesses of Ruby on Rails workshop series.

• Some of the links were to sites that didn't exist and some code examples were not up to date. I wasted a lot of time on some things that if they had of been right in the first place would have made things a lot easier.
  
  
• It was not concentrated directly enough on Ruby on Rails.
  
  
• The Rails Space book was introduced too late.

3. List what aspects of Ruby on Rails workshop series that you found to be most difficult.

• Deployment. There are so many options and ways to do it and a lot of different technologies that you need to get your head around. I would like to have seen a domain set up for us that we could have published to rather than have to rely on other students. Also, there was only one free hosting site that I could find on the internet. It seems that most hosting for ROR you now have to pay for.
  
  
• If found that the workload was very high.
  

4. List what improvements could be made to the Ruby on Rails workshop series.

• The workshop series has too much work in it when you consider that there are a lot of exercise questions to answer, a text book to read and updating the blog as well. Although the work is interesting it is very time consuming.

Define more clearly what needs to be done.

Free response and reflective questions:

5. Reflect on your experiences with the other Web framework used in this subject: Was it effective? How can it be improved? Should other Web frameworks be used as well or instead of Ruby on Rails?

• I am not sure we looked at any other web frameworks for this subject did we? I like Ruby on Rails and it is definitely a good way of introducing a web development framework that is completely different to asp.net which I think a lot of people doing this course would have knowledge of.
  
  
• I like the way Ruby on Rails is set up and how the models, views and controllers are all in their separate directories in their own files. It makes the MVC paradigm much easier to understand.

6. Did the Developer’s or IT managers Team that you joined after workshop 4 have a preference towards using other tools to facilitate collaboration? Comment on the differences between these use of the sub-forum or Interact wiki tools from your experiences in this subject.

• The Developer's forum was not very successful. This is not anyone's fault, it is just that there was just too much work to undertake. Also as we are distance students who obviously work full time as well, it is very hard to find a time when everyone is free and able to contribute.
  
  
• The wiki was not used at all.
  
  
• I think most people had RSS feeds on each others blogs so that we could keep up with what everyone was doing, and answer questions if need be.
  
  
• If there was less work to get through, it would be good to have a webex session once a fortnight for an hour to go through what is expected and keep everyone on track.

7. Further comments to add?

• I would like to see a more structured approach to the subject.
  
  
• The Developing Distributed and E -Commerce Applications (2nd ed.) text was last published in 2004, which I think is too dated for a subject such as this where we are looking at the latest web technologies.