A new session of each course opens each month, allowing you to enroll whenever your busy schedule permits!
How does it work? Once a session starts, two lessons will be released each week, for the six-week duration of your course. You will have access to all previously released lessons until the course ends.
Keep in mind that the interactive discussion area for each lesson automatically closes 2 weeks after each lesson is released, so you’re encouraged to complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.
The Final Exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson. Once the Final Exam has been released, you will have 2 weeks plus 10 days to complete the Final and finish any remaining lessons in your course. No further extensions can be provided beyond these 10 days.
Week One
Lesson 01 - OpenFileDialog and SaveFileDialog Classes
Wednesday
Sometimes it feels like everything in life is either dependent on or monitored by a computer. Indeed, most Visual Basic programs are all about data based on the things that people do. Whether it's the books they buy, the stores where they shop, or the restaurants where they eat, data like that is stored in a file on the computer's hard drive, and these programs enable users to locate and save changes to that data. By the time you finish this first lesson, you'll learn how to use the OpenFileDialog and SaveFileDialog classes to give your programs this functionality.
Lesson 02 - Menus
Friday
The term menu may bring to mind choices of delicious food (and high prices) at an elegant restaurant. Or it may make you think of what you see in the drive-through lane at the local fast food joint. Either way, menus inform you of your choices. They perform a similar purpose in programs, giving you choices depending on what you want to do, such as to open, print, or save a document. In this lesson, you'll discover how to use menus in your programs.
Week Two
Lesson 03 - Toolbars
Wednesday
This lesson is all about bars, but not the kind that serve drinks. In this lesson, you'll explore a different kind of bar—the kind that allows you to enhance your application both visually and functionally. It's called the toolbar or toolstrip, and when you finish this lesson, you'll know how to use toolbars in your applications and how to coordinate them with menus.
Lesson 04 - Dialog Forms
Friday
In a movie, the leading actor or actress may be the star of the show. But rarely will one actor or actress perform all of the roles in that show. Similarly, the main form in your program may be the star, but as your applications become more sophisticated, you'll need other, helper forms. In this lesson, you'll discover an important type of helper form—the dialog form.
Week Three
Lesson 05 - Owned Forms and Property Procedures
Wednesday
In this lesson, you'll learn about another important helper form and how to use it in your application. The lesson will discuss the modeless, or owned form.
Lesson 06 - Multiple Document Interface (MDI) Applications
Friday
You probably take for granted that, while you're typing text in Microsoft Word, you can also have other documents open. This function allows you to go back and forth between documents without having to close any. This ability is called Multiple Document Interface, and after this lesson, you'll know how to give this ability to your programs.
Week Four
Lesson 07 - Introduction to Databases
Wednesday
In this lesson, you'll begin your journey into the world of databases. You previously learned about how people's entire lives are stored on computers—the books they buy, the stores where they shop, and the restaurants where they eat. That information is stored in databases, and they're what enable you to make sense of data and do useful things with it. You'll learn all about them in this lesson.
Lesson 08 - Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL)
Friday
Now that you've learned about databases, you need to speak their language. That language is called Structured Query Language, better known by the abbreviation SQL. After this lesson, you'll not only know how to pronounce SQL, but more important, you'll understand how to use SQL to talk to your database. Of course, you won't literally talk to your database—your friends might start worrying about you if you did—but instead, you'll use SQL in your Visual Basic applications to communicate with your database.
Week Five
Lesson 09 - Introduction to ADO.NET
Wednesday
While you've already learned a lot about databases in the previous two lessons, programming is about writing code. So, in this lesson, you'll learn how to write code to access a database.
Lesson 10 - Database Schema
Friday
Unlike people, databases don't scheme, but they do have a schema. This is the database's structure. It's very useful to know how to access this structure by code. You'll find out how to do that in this lesson.
Week Six
Lesson 11 - Master-Detail Tables
Wednesday
The business world—the very people who pay programmers to write programs—has great demand for programs that help them easily find the data they need to make decisions. This is called drilling down into data. This isn't like oil drilling, but it's important to your applications. When you finish this lesson, you'll know how to create master-detail tables that enable users to quickly find the data they need.
Lesson 12 - Where Do I Go From Here?
Friday
This may be the final lesson, but it certainly isn't the end of your programming journey. Where do you go from here? This lesson will go over all the options that are now available to you!