Hello, I find the skills we learn and teach in the Carpentries very useful to teach any other subject (like genetics). The more I think about it, the more reasons I find to remove from any syllabus the use of ad hoc simulation programs (like StarGenetics or Populus) and user-friendly interfaces. Easy as it may be, learning how to use those programs and web sites is a wasted cognitive load. And most importantly, they train students to press buttons and expect the results, without even having the chance of knowing how it happened. I'm convinced that the most important features of those programs could be reproduced quite easily in any programming language, and displayed in a Jupyter notebook, for example, for students to play with it. I haven't done it yet, but I'm determined to.
My question is: do you know of any research or evidence about how good of an idea it is? I can envision some colleagues and students to be reluctant to get exposed to code. If I could bring up evidence, they'd be easier to convince. Thanks. Ignasi. ------------------------------------------ The Carpentries: discuss Permalink: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tce66cd1d676b5876-M5f9514fc6c0253646cb9e836 Delivery options: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/subscription
