Hi,
I'm going through the Python novice lesson for a workshop I'm teaching this
week. It's been a few months since the last time I taught it and I've noticed
that the lesson has increased substantially. I feel the same with the git
novice lesson: in the last couple of months I'm the maintainer, we've added a
good 15 minutes in a lesson that most instructors and learners have trouble
finishing. Also, I think these additions are not reflected properly in the
estimated times.
For example, the first topic of the python lesson [1] has now 10 challenges,
plus variables, memory model, operators, importing a module, numpy arrays,
slicing and indexing, methods for objects, plotting with matplotlib, and some
strings. The estimated time is 30 minutes, which leaves me with ~2 mins per
concept and 1 minute per challenge, where I'm supposed to correctly type and
run more than 50 lines of code. I also have to show how iPython notebook works.
I think this is not doable for the average novice learner and instructor.
As I said, this is not specific to the Python lesson. In a workshop I taught
last week, a similar situation with other lessons created a lot of frustration
among the students and, specially, among the instructors and helpers (all
first-timers but me).
I understand that we all want to contribute to the lessons and add the last
best thing, but we are risking that our lessons become more a self-study
material, instead of something instructors can use in a workshop.
Best,
Ivan
[1] http://swcarpentry.github.io/python-novice-inflammation/01-numpy.html
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