I am afraid Ian that in this case the material is deficient, the explanations given so far have been so vague it beggars belief. BJT transistors were explained with a scarce mention of hfe, it was made to sound like a secondary consideration, there are virtually no equations presented to explain component choices, like i say, if i really knew nothing this material would have taught me nothing and if anything just left me more confused. why am i being asked to take more explanations off the internet than from the course material ? I was given a 2 page wishy washy explanation of JFETS's and MOSFET's and then given addresses to online tutorials that are several pages long for more information but was warned that there was more information there than i needed (the basic maths maybe ??). The idea of having a book is that you read it, not keep ping ponging from book to internet because the book is incomplete.
2 of the "activities" tell me to watch "a video" - what video ? none was supplied, none is on the materials check list and no internet resource was cited, i was being asked to take measurements of waveforms in the video off the screen. There is clearly very little will in this course to explain and illustrate stuff, as soon as it means a bit of work there is either a gaping hole or I'm told to use a website that could be taken down tomorrow just so they didn't have to draw a graph or explain something. As it stands i could write the first 50 pages of this course myself and do a damn better job.
I'm just going to start the op-amp section, god only knows what I'll not be finding in there!