Hi Dan,
I've been fighting this fight for years, glad to have someone else on
board! The two main things I have run into are:
1. Politics. The ire of CS departments can be raised when others go
offering their own coding courses, in a way I didn't anticipate.
2 (a). Staffing. It's really tough to get someone to actually *deliver*
the course - and it's not always as simple as volunteering to do it
yourself; there are rules.
2 (b). Curriculum control. When I have seen 'coding for scientists'
style courses, they were taught by faculty who had intensely held
beliefs about what the content should be (and it didn't even vaguely
resemble SWC). So it's not just a matter of getting a lecturer - but
getting one that wants to play ball with your curriculum.
The other tangent I'll point out, is that in a classroom setting, there
are a lot of opportunities that open up that we just don't have in a
workshop (think projects, more formative & summative assessments). Just
slicing up a workshop and spreading it over a semester is a great start,
but if we can navigate the logistics above, we can do even more.
Again, glad to see this getting talked about! Getting this material into
program curriculum is IMO a crucial goal, let me know how I can support.
On 2014-09-29 9:36 AM, Daniel Chen wrote:
Hi everyone:
I was wondering if anyone has had any success teaching the swc
material as a semester long lab course? Assuming 1 lab a week for 1.5
hours a lab, if we mimic the swc workshop pace we have at least 6
weeks of material:
Bash: 2 weeks
Git: 2 weeks
Python/R: 2 weeks
Now, this could be 2 half-semester courses or it can be expanded to
include LaTeX, SQL, data carpentry material, for a semester long
course. Has anyone else thought of this or tried to pitch this to a
department chair?
I've touched base on the idea of such a course with numerous faculty
members (from CUMC and the EE department at CU), and the response is
all positive. I'm mostly asking to see what logistical/administrative
hurdles I will encounter.
- Dan
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Bill Mills
Community Manager, Mozilla Science Lab
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