I can't attend the meeting tomorrow, but I agree with the plan. We could also set some guidelines for maintainers on how long a lesson would be. For example, limits in the number of challenges, lines of code, or even words per topic. I don't pretend to put a hard limit, but just as a function with 100 lines and 20 nested loops "smells of bad code", a topic with more than 5 learning objectives or more than 5 challenges is probably bloated.
Best, Ivan El 31/03/2015, a las 12:01, Greg Wilson <[email protected]> escribió: > I agree - how's this for a plan? > > 1. Maintainers for each lesson file an issue suggesting material that can be > moved into discussion.md (a storage depot for extra stuff). > > 2. We ask trainees to submit exercises (particularly MCQs) rather than new > content. > > Ivan/Gabriel, would you be willing to lead discussion of this at tomorrow's > lab meeting? > > Thanks, > Greg > > On 2015-03-31 11:38 AM, Gabriel A. Devenyi wrote: >> I've had a recent similar concern regarding the shell lessons. >> >> I think the root cause of this may be the final assignment for instructor >> training, it's probably easiest for people to just add material. We may need >> to re-spin that assignment a bit so we don't encourage bloat. >> >> -- >> Gabriel A. Devenyi B.Eng. Ph.D. >> Research Computing Associate >> Computational Brain Anatomy Laboratory >> Cerebral Imaging Center >> Douglas Mental Health University Institute >> McGill University >> t: 514.761.6131x4781 >> e: [email protected] >> >> On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 11:32 AM, Ivan Gonzalez <[email protected]> wrote: >> 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 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org > > -- > Dr. Greg Wilson | [email protected] > Software Carpentry | http://software-carpentry.org > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
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