You'll have an instructor and/or mentor there to walk you through the lessons and answer questions. Then when they think you know the information well enough and you're able to do everything with a somewhat fast speed in sweatbox, they will assign you the Student 1 exam which will clear you to control on the vatsim network under supervision, until they say you can control alone. My instructor was really helpful and stuck around after my exam to go over the questions I got wrong. They want you know what you're doing and be confident in that before you're released onto vatsim.
If you are interested
HERE (pdf) is ZMP's training guidlines so you can get a rough idea of what you can expect each lesson. It will probably be slightly different for ZLA though. Section 3 has the student 1 syllabus.