One crucial thing to note: you don't have to actually *do* all the challenges - I certainly don't.
I think it's valuable to have a large selection of challenges for instructors to pick from, to reflect exactly what they want to emphasize; as we encouraged new instructors to add new challenges, the intention was never for everyone to do every challenge every time. But, that could be much better communicated. On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 9:27 AM, Ivan Gonzalez <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 > [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 > > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org > -- Best Regards, Bill Mills Community Manager Mozilla Science Lab
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