These exercises are designed to introduce you to the basics of interacting with Maya. While these exercises are not graded, the assignments will assume that you know the material presented here. It will be the most beneficial for you to walk through each exercise with a Maya file open, but merely reading through each exercise will help you a great deal.
There are numerous screenshots sprinkled throughout the exercises. In the exercises they are presented in a smaller format, however they can be expanded if you need a better view. Simply right click the image and select "View Image" (Assumes Firefox).
Some of the assignments will be using a simple Maya file called block guy (Right click the link and select "Save Link As..." to save the file instead of opening the file as text in the browser). The exercises here are listed in order, with later exercises assuming you have finished earlier ones.
If you are interested in learning more about Maya's capabilities, Maya provides a fairly extensive Help reference. This can be accessed by hitting F1 or going to Help → Maya Help.
The Guerrilla CG Project also provides a set of short, informative videos that explain the basics of computer animation as well as certain problems that you may come upon.