Interns! Employers! What would you consider to be essential knowledge for learning Illustrator?

Question

Hello all,
I'm going to be a Teaching Assistant for an introductory vector graphics class at a university. I'm currently in the sorts of creating the curriculum for my tutorial sessions, which will primarily be technical demonstrations of various features in Adobe Illustrator CS5. But before delving into that, I figured I'd ask the interns, freelancers and employers here what you are expected/expecting to know with Adobe Illustrator in the real world.
Just a reminder that this course is supposed to be an introduction to the program. Any input received will be an enormous help to both the making of the curriculum and, most importantly, the students.
Thanks!

Answer 1

I created a syllubus for training engineers and marketing executives the basics in Illustrator.  These were people who never used the application before and thought it could easily be learned, and thus, reduce the need for a professional like me ( funny, huh? ).  I took it as part of my job.  But, what I did was create a series of lessons that involved such things as drawing by hand, creating a layout ( by hand ), how to read a layout ( i.e., measurements including white space ), how to specify type and typography ( the old way by character counting ).  This, I thought, would provide them a foundation for building documents and artwork in Illustrator.  It is a crash course on how things used to be done before the computer.  Then, I focused a number of lessons on the tool palette.  Toward the end there were a few lessons in color, color theory, and the printing process.  The key to my approach was I gave the participant student a handout of reference material to read.  There was also lab time involved where they ould apply what they read and learned.  I made it mandatory that they could not advance without completing the previous homework exercises and lab project(s).  All the while keeping everything in the "basics" category.  No need to advance into other areas of compound paths, masking, etc., if they do not understand the basic fundamentals of the application.  There is a sense out there that people believe the application can be learned in a short amount of time.  I've been using Illustrator for 16 years and there are still things to learn like scatter brushes.  I always look for job applicants that can show me a sketch or a marker comp and then present how the particular design was produced using the computer.  That involves getting to know their "thinking" behind the particular project and how they solved a particular problem.  I, personally, do not like looking at a bunch of flash in a portfolio...many, many examples of puff without showing the thinking behind them.  What were you presented with as a problem and how did you solve it?  Try to focus their early on attention in the thought process.  The sketch.  I had some lessons where the student had to duplicate a newspaper ad exactly, right down to the fonts used.  I also had them look through their local newspaper and find what they considered a bad ad, something poorly designed. Then, I had them create 3 sketch alternatives using the same ad size.  As part of the lesson, I had them choose the one they thought was their best effort and recreate it in Illustrator.  This was about half way through my curriculum.  At first, at the beginning, I had them create a basic smiley face button pin.  This required using basic shapes and basic lines.  That's what I think is part of the plan, focusing a few lessons on the basics and creating basic shapes.  Since you are involved with creating a program for beginners, focus your efforts on the basics and building a solid foundation in design.