Even better! I was going to suggest A/B testing with different signup
URLs, but you're right, personal ennui is just as good - I'll leave it
to people who have some experience with experimental ethics to hammer
out the details. I eagerly await the results,
On 2014-10-30 11:25 AM, Sarah Mount wrote:
Interesting stuff Bill.
I guess the easy way to test your hypothesis is to seed the advert
with something that you can reference afterwards. "Please bring a
photo of your local neighbourhood cat for our ice breaker session",
"please bring an apple for the instructor", "please come carrying a
placard which expresses your personal ennui".
You could ask them to bring the last code they wrote, but it would be
a shame to miss an opportunity for some mischief ;)
Sarah
On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 6:18 PM, Bill Mills
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
+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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twitter: @snim2
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Community Manager, Mozilla Science Lab
@billdoesphysics
--
Sarah Mount, Senior Lecturer, University of Wolverhampton
website: http://www.snim2.org/
twitter: @snim2
--
Bill Mills
Community Manager, Mozilla Science Lab
@billdoesphysics
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