I think you've made a good choice with keeping VS out of the picture. Understanding the basics of compiling from the command line is where I start with novices.

I think you've made a good choice with keeping VS out of the picture. Understanding the basics of compiling from the command line is where I start with novices. No point blowing their minds with a gazillion IDE knobs and dials. You could take this further and teach some basic command line debugging :)