You spent a lot of time telling us how to install datatables.net via npm and simply assumed that we have npm. I'm using Visual Studio 2019, I have that node.js editing option installed, and even the command line console via Visual Studio has no clue what npm is.
I'm probably going to spend time trying to figure out a different way to install datatables.net, but I'm not going to bother with npm.
The way I see it, if the course isn't about npm, and the instructor never bothered to make sure that we knew how to get our hands on npm, and the course is marketed to beginners, then npm isn't of any importance to said course.