The last few posts, I've been focusing on our collective progress with passing Cisco exams this year, and what's holding us back. It appears that the planning more deeply - beyond just picking the exam and buying the right study resources - can certainly speed up the study process as well as make us all more successful in passing the exam. So, it seems appropriate that I spend a little time talking about the specifics of a plan.

For CCNA candidates, there are a lot of tools out there, including several with my name on the cover. I'm not going to try and list all the available resources. Today, I'm going to focus on some pros/cons about how to use general classes of tools. Next post, I'll get more specific with examples of a plan. I'll refer to the tools I know best - ones I helped create, or others from Cisco Press - but you can extrapolate somewhat easily from there. FYI, you can see the ones I've done with Cisco Press here.

There are four main classes of tools I'd suggest in a study plan: books, practice exams, hands-on practice (sim, real gear, Dynamips), and videos. It appears that most people use the books as the anchor for the entire study plan, with the other tools fitting in to complement their reading. I'll make that same assumption. Also, to keep things focused, I'll examine topics related to the ICND1 half of CCNA, and use my ICND1 Exam Cert Guide as the book.

Also, a lot of this is just my opinion, so take it as that - and offer your opinion as well.

The book: First, I think you should list each book chapter individually, with a place to note whether you read it, skimmed it, or just reviewed the highlights. To know whether to read the chapter or not, you should begin each chapter with its pre-assessment quiz. That's the main reason why the Cisco Press ECG series books start with a Do I Know This Already (DIKTA) quiz. (For you American football fans, yes, we call those Mike Ditka quizzes internally.) The idea is somewhat obvious, especially after seeing our survey that said time was the most popular reason for being behind in our exam study efforts.

I think everyone should at least review the topics in each chapter, even if you get all the pre-chapter assessment questions right. To aid that process, the most recent Cisco Press ECG's use a little icon (key topics) beside the main points to review. The key topics are things that are absolutely dead center in the topics for the exam, so it's worth the time.

For your study plan, For each chapter, I would: 1) list a place to note your original score on the DIKTA quiz, 2) check whether you chose to read/skim/review the chapter, and 3) a place to check once you've reviewed the chapter by repeating the DIKTA questions and by reviewing the key topics.

Practice questions: The actual Cisco exams are a series of questions, so every study plan ought to include some practice answering questions. Most ECG-style books include exam software with a database of exam questions, and you can buy practice tests from many companies. For example, my ICND1 and ICND2 books include software written by Boson Software (http://www.boson.com/), but an exam database written by folks from Cisco Press (me included).

Regardless of where you get the practice exams, the bigger question for study planning is how to use the exams. Personally, I'm a big fan of using questions to help drill on the concepts covered in large sections of the book you use. For example, my ICND1 book has 5 "Parts" as labeled in the Table of Contents, with the Parts covering: Overview, LAN, Routing, WAN, and Final Preparation. My suggestion would be to read all the chapters in 1 part of the book, and then use the exam software to select only questions from that part's chapters, and then try to answer all the questions from those chapters. Do the same for parts 2, 3, and 4. This helps you review topics, helps you uncover what you've forgotten, and it makes you apply the concepts to unique scenarios.

You can/should also plan to take some practice exams as part of your final study, once you've read all the chapters, practiced all the labs, etc. However, if you've already used all the questions that came with your book, then you might want to purchase another exam, just so you'll have some brand-new questions to examine.

In short, I think you should use practice exams in 2 ways: first, use them at the end of each major topic area ("part" in my books), and at the end of the study process.

Videos: It seems that the video products available for CCNA seem to fall into a couple of categories: 1) videos meant to supplement study from books, and 2) videos meant to be a complete CCNA (or ICND1 or ICND2) course. The Cisco Press Video Mentor series falls into the 1^st category, with a list price of around $70 and about 4 hours of video. A quick google search reveals a handful of  video products that fall into the 2^nd category.  

For the longer running video series that are intended to be more like a full course, you might argue that they would be best used before the comparable chapters in the book you use. It should be fairly obvious to match individual videos to different book chapters. However, I could see arguments that the videos fit better after reading the book chapters as well.

For the video products that are designed to supplement learning from other sources, e.g. the Cisco Press Video Mentor series, I'd suggest watching the related videos after reading the related chapter from your chosen book. The CCNA VM product in particular shows videos that present a particular scenario, the need to configure specific items, and the configuration/verification of those items. (Check out this link for a page with a free sample Video from the CCNA Video Mentor product.)

In short: use the more comprehensive videos before or after the related chapter in the book (your choice), or for the supplemental video, use them after reading the related chapter.

Lab practice: Well, this topic is going to take more than a few paragraphs, so I'll likely hit it in other blog posts. You've got a couple of options: buy a simulator, buy real (used) gear, use dynamips/GNS3, rent gear, borrow gear. For now, I'm lumping all that together, and asking this question: when should you practice what you've read about, seen in videos, and been asked about in questions? Well, in my opinion, you've got a couple of choices. First, I think it's reasonable to do "labs" related to the topics in a chapter at the end of the chapter. That's essentially what happens in most live classroom - the instructor completes a lecture, and turns you loose in lab. One alternative is to stop and do labs as soon as you read about a new feature, even before completing the chapter. You could also wait to do labs at the end of a "part" of the book as well. I think the first option I listed, doing labs at the end of each chapter, is the right mix of allowing you to get the practice soon after reading, but it doesn't require too many transitions from reading/viewing to doing labs.

Planning what to do can be problematic depending on your resources - more on that next week.

So, that's a lot of rambling. You tell me what you'd prefer - the same or different. I'll take the planning topic one more step while wrapping it up in the next post.