The best kind of practice run is giving the course to a portion of your audience. If you have the opportunity to give the course to a small audience, then do this.

If you cannot test the course on a subset of your audience, consider delivering the course to an empty room. That may sound strange, but this method works. Hearing yourself deliver the lectures and demos aloud is an effective way to test the material you’ve written. Time yourself. It’s an effective way to determine how long each lecture/demo will take.

Step through the student exercises. Do them in the same order the students will. Does the data from one exercise flow into the next? Are the functions used in each exercise covered in the lecture/demo? How long does each exercise take? After the practice run, you might want to revise your estimate of the course duration.

Finally, reset the computer(s) that you used during your practice run. Return them to the condition they should be in at the beginning of the class. This is a good test of your refresh routine.