Dear April, > Message: 1 > Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 09:46:52 -0500 > From: April Wright <[email protected]> > To: Software Carpentry Discussion > <[email protected]> > Subject: [Discuss] Targeting intermediate learners > Message-ID: > <caemqffxhpqhuff7+ff0hwjnocgbkxtx3zscx7etka_rbc1y...@mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Hi all- > > I had a question about targeting appropriate enrolment for a course. I > recently taught an intermediate Python workshop (intermediate as defined by > the basics course preceding it) at my home institution. It filled within > hours, which was encouraging. > > But, day of, about 1/5 of the students were utterly unable to keep up. Two > had never opened a terminal. I had to forcefully tell one student to leave > because I couldn't spare the time to explain how lists work in Python and > why whitespace is important and he got really belligerent about it. > > The students who stayed got a lot out of it, and I got some good feedback > for what they'd like to see in another Python workshop through the same > program. > > Below is the announcement for the course. > > ------------------- > Intermediate Python This domain non-specific course is designed for Python > programmers who have a little more experience with the language. Learners > will be expected to be familiar with control flow, basic Python objects > (variable assignment, lists, dictionaries) and file input and output. This > course will cover the knowledge to make code modular, readable and > reproducible. We will cover functions, error handling and classes. > > An e-mail with install instructions will be sent to you the week before > class begins. If you have questions about your qualifications for the > course, please contact the instructor. > ----------------------- > > What I'm wondering is if I could have worded it better to target the right > students students? I floated the idea of locking enrolment to people who > have taken the basic Python or the permission of the instructor, but that > requires me to put a lot of faith in an already-strained bureaucracy. > Suggestions?
We had issues along these lines with some of our courses. When we started the 'Advanced R development' course [*], some participant thought that it was a follow-up of the 'Beginners R course' and joined despite the description stating requirement that were clearly (for use, at least) not met after two days of introductory programming course. As a result, we specified in the requirement that attending the beginners course was not enough. Also, I think that asking specific programming questions and requesting delegates to explicitly state what kind of prior experience they have is very helpful. It might costs a bit of time before the course but, eventually, save a lot of time and frustration during the event. Best wishes, Laurent [*] In hindsight, it was not a good idea to call that it advanced course (too vague), and we renamed it to avoid such confusion. The notion of being advanced/intermediate is not quite arbitrary, especially for people that are not that advanced. > Thanks! > > --a > --------- > Graduate Student > Section of Integrative Biology > University of Texas at Austin > 1 University Station, C1100 > Austin, TX 78712-0254 > Phone: 512.940.5761 > http://wrightaprilm.github.io/ > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > <http://lists.software-carpentry.org/pipermail/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org/attachments/20141030/4ceff255/attachment-0001.html> > _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
