+1 Sarah, the code sample is an interesting idea, we should totally try
it! But, I'd love to see some experimentation done to test my sneaking
suspicion that struggling students don't read the advertisement text at
all. I'm comfortable assuming that that's part of the effect - but how
big a part?
I understand some people are currently working on overhauling workshop
pretesting. How is that effort going? I think that particular project
was testing to split large classes up into beginner and intermediate
rooms (which is a whole other strategy if you have the staff for it),
but there's probably something to be learned there for pre-workshop
exams, too; making an anonymous pretest webpage with immediate feedback
is doable, happy to help there if anyone is interested.
End of the day though, you're always going to have the low tail in the
skill distribution, which is why to solve this problem in situ I'm such
a big fan of pair programming and peer instruction, so those weaker
students get the tutoring and attention they need.
On 2014-10-30 9:22 AM, Sarah Mount wrote:
Hi everyone, sorry for top-posting.
I think this sentence "Learners will be expected to be familiar with
control flow, basic Python objects (variable assignment, lists,
dictionaries) and file input and output." may be your problem.
Beginners will not know what they don't know, and it may not be clear
that "control flow" means "if, for and while", and so on.
Some people look at things like this and their reaction is "oh, a word
I don't know, but I'm a smart person and I could probably figure it
out" and some people think "oh, a word I don't know. This clearly
isn't for me". The second group of people may include learners who do
know if/while/for but don't know the jargon, and it is a shame to miss
those people.
I would suggest that you include in your call for participation a
small piece of code and say something like "if you have written
something like this before, this course is for you".
Of course, I am speaking from relatively little experience here...
Cheers,
Sarah
On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 2:46 PM, April Wright <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
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?
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 <tel:512.940.5761>
http://wrightaprilm.github.io/
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Sarah Mount, Senior Lecturer, University of Wolverhampton
website: http://www.snim2.org/
twitter: @snim2
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