Please download and extract the lad demo dataset into your working directory:
download data set from this location (~5.3Mb): http://linuxlab.sbs.umass.edu/introFossgisUmass/datasets/lab_intro/IntroQGISClassDemo.zip
unzip the data set into your working directory (e.g C:\temp\yourdir\)
This Data set includes GIS layers for the town of Amherst, Massachusetts.