Home

When you log in, the Home page is displayed. The main purpose of the Home page is to show links to your own courses and to the Course Tray, through which you can purchase more courses and order demo courses.

• My Courses - list of courses for which you have full licenses and which you have purchased.
• Demo Courses - list of courses for which you have ordered demo accounts.
• Expired Courses - list of courses you can't access due to expired licenses.
• The Course Tray allows you to purchase more courses and order demo courses.

On the left you can see your student card through which you can edit your profile information, and the News column, showing current news about the service.

All courses within arm's reach

The Course Tray presents all available programming languages and courses related to them.

• You can change the language by dragging the horizontal slider and clicking one of the language logos.
• By clicking a course name you can download a PDF brochure and get more information.
• Want to purchase a course? Click the Buy button and pay immediately with Visa, MasterCard, Visa Electron or through one of the several Finnish online bank services.
• To try out a course you can click the Try Demo button. This adds the course to your list of demo courses and takes you directly to the demo course.

Welcome to study!

When accessing a course, you are taken to the Course Home.

• On this page you can see general information about your course activity and, for example, birthday congratulations.
• You can edit your personal information via the student card in the upper left corner.
• The course menu below the student card takes you to different chapters (the number buttons) or features.

Course features are introduced on the following pages.

Theory

Course theory is divided into several chapters and each of these chapters contains quizzes and programming exercises. Besides pure text course theory can contain images and code examples, as follows:

• short, one-line examples
• complete, working program examples
• Edit & Execute examples which can be modified and executed (see next page)

Notice how the colors on the chapter buttons vary. Blue is for a chapter with no completed exercises, yellow for a chapter with some completed exercises and green for a chapter with all exercises completed.

Code it, try it

Course theory may include Edit & Execute examples which make it possible to edit code examples and execute them to show results.

You can recognize an Edit & Execute example by its code editor, below which you can find two buttons:

• Restore
• Compile & execute

The Restore button clears your changes to the code so you can easily start over.

The Compile & execute button starts the execution of the program and opens a new window in which you can see the results. You can also give input from keyboard, if needed.

Edit & Execute examples often include an example output below the code editor so you can compare your changes to the program to the original output.

Choose wisely

Questions of multiple choice exercises are closely related to theory and besides general knowledge they check your programming language syntax knowledge.

You can choose an exercise by clicking the number buttons on the upper edge. Blue color means an unfinished exercise, green is for correct answer and red stands for an exercise answered incorrectly.

When you have answered to a question, you are given points and, if the answer was incorrect, the correct answer is displayed.

Code the right solution

Programming exercises are also closely related to theory. They are made of three tabs:

• Assignment
• Implementation
• Testing

The Assignment tab shows the exercise and often an example output.

The Implementation tab includes a code editor in which you can write your solution.

The Testing tab is all about testing your program. The code is compiled on a server and executed, also shown to you. If there are errors in the source code or something bad happens during the execution of the program, the problems are reported to you. You can also view the exact error message given by the compiler.

Links and files

Extra Material is divided into two parts: Link List and Files.

The Link List includes links to resources related to the course. These resources cover general knowledge of the programming language, guides and articles and code examples. You can also save your own links.

The Files section is similar to the Link List but contains files. Ready-to-use material may contain e.g. code examples and you can save your own files on the server.

Knowledge is power

Similar to Extra Material, My Corner is divided into two parts: Achievements and Statistics.

In the Achievements section you can monitor your progress in chapters and their exercises. First you choose a chapter and the exercises are shown to you. In this tab you can select an individual exercise to examine and try to solve it if it was an unfinished exercise.

The Statistics feature gives you an overview of other users of the service studying the same course.

Asking for help

The Ask a Tutor feature gives you a chance to ask course related questions from the administrators of the service.

You can ask about some specific exercise or theory, for example. Questions will be answered by an expert of the subject, and the answer is usually given not later than the next business day.

Practice without constraints

In the Open Practice feature you can practice your programming skills without limitations. You can create much more complex programs than in Edit & Execute examples and free yourself from the limitations of programming exercises. You can choose from two different types of open practice.

The IDE-based Open Practice means a simplified, graphical development environment (IDE, integrated development environment), in which you can manage your projects, source codes and the compilation process directly with mouse clicks. IDE-based free practice is best suitable for beginners.

In the Shell-based Open Practice you can connect to a Linux server and use the command-line interface to manage your programming projects. This environment is best suitable for experienced programmers and persons knowing how to use a text-based Linux enviroment or interested in it.