How This Course Works

After this lesson you can

• Describe how the parts of PowerShell in Depth fit together: lessons, Check yourself, exercises, chapter checks and module assessments

Key takeaways

• PowerShell in Depth has nine modules, from your first command to tools of your own. Every lesson that needs files makes them in a practice folder.
• Skills are short "you can do this" statements. They are what the questions test and what your progress counts.
• An exercise is done when every test in its check passes. You run the check yourself with Invoke-Pester.
• Chapter checks are practice you can take as often as you like. A module assessment passes at 80%, with three tries a day.
• Covered counts the lessons you've finished; Mastered counts the skills you've shown you know, with three clean answers to questions that come at each skill from at least two different angles.

This course is self-study: you go at your own pace, and the course itself tells you how you're doing. A few minutes here now saves guessing later, because every chapter works the same way. Here is what the course is made of, and how to get the most from each part.

The shape of the course

Each lesson has a level from 1 to 4: meeting an idea is level 1, working with it level 2, building with it level 3, and the advanced end level 4. A level says how deep a lesson goes into its subject, not how far into the course it is.

The course is written for Windows 11 and PowerShell 7. Where a Mac or Linux works differently, or the older Windows PowerShell 5.1 does, a short note says so.

Skills: what you'll be able to do

Most lessons start by listing their skills: short "you can do this" statements, such as Find the folder you're in with Get-Location. Skills are what the questions test, and what your progress counts.

Practice folders and the terminal game

Every lesson that needs files gives you the commands that make them, in a practice folder inside $HOME\terminal-practice. Nothing you try there can touch your real documents, and the commands are safe to run again if you want a fresh start.

Many lessons also have a Try it in the terminal section: a part of Terminal Quest, a text adventure where folders are rooms and files are things to read. It plays right on the lesson page, in PowerShell, with nothing to install.

Check yourself

Near the end of a lesson, a Check yourself block asks one to three short questions about what you just read, then shows you the answer and why. Use them as a quick self-test: if you get one wrong, that's useful news, not a failure. Read the explanation, look back at the lesson, and carry on.

Exercises, and their checks

Lessons whose titles start with Exercise: give you a small job: a folder to explore or tidy, or a script to finish, and a check, a small file of tests that looks at your work and says whether each part is right. You download the exercise, do the work in PowerShell, and run Invoke-Pester from the exercise's folder as often as you like. When every test passes, you're done. The first exercise, at the end of this chapter, installs Pester, the tool that runs the checks.

Exercises are where reading turns into skill, so don't skip them.

Chapter checks and module assessments

• A chapter check is a short quiz on the chapter's skills. Take it whenever you like, as often as you like: it's practice, and it tells you what to review.
• A module assessment ends each module. 80% passes. You get three tries a day, then a 24-hour rest before the next three.

Every attempt draws different questions, so a retake is a fair new try, not a memory test. Most learners take an assessment more than once.

Covered and Mastered

When you're signed in, the course keeps two separate records of your progress:

• Covered: the lessons you've finished.
• Mastered: the skills and key terms you've shown you know. A skill is mastered when you answer three different questions about it cleanly, meaning right the first time and without a hint, and those questions come at it from at least two different angles. For a skill such as find the folder you're in, one question might ask which command answers "where am I?", and another might show you a prompt and ask what that command will print. Answering from two angles shows you understand the skill, not that you remember one answer. A later miss drops it back, so mastery stays honest.

Reading every lesson doesn't mean you know it, and the course never pretends it does. That's why the two are kept apart.

Who gets what

• Everyone, signed in or not, can read every lesson and answer its Check yourself questions.
• Signed in, your answers count toward your skills, and you can tick lessons as done.
• With Premium, or if you own this course, you also get course progress on every page, the chapter checks, the module assessments, and the Certificate of Completion: every lesson covered and every module assessment passed.

A good rhythm

1. Read a lesson, and run its commands in your own PowerShell window.
2. Play its terminal game, when it has one, and answer its Check yourself questions.
3. Do the exercise at the end of each chapter, and run its check until every test passes.
4. Take the chapter check, and review the skills it points to.
5. When a module's skills are mastered, take its assessment.

Try it. Look at this chapter's list of lessons. Find the exercise lesson at the end, and the chapter check after it: that's the rhythm every chapter follows.

Check yourself

1 question to try on the lesson page.

So what

The course is built so you always know where you stand: what you've read, what you've mastered, and what to practice next.