I use SWC and DC materials in my undergrad lab classes (ARCHY 483 Stone
artefact archaeology and ARCHY 482 Geoarchaeology). I use those
materials to teach simple scripted workflows, basic visualization
methods, and principles and techniques of reproducible research.
I don't have much course material on coding, it's mostly live coding
during labs (using SWC/DC content), a series of custom R markdown
templates to guide the students towards producing a final lab report
(eg. https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/913311), and frequent references to
Jenny's STAT 545 pages.
Our lower level undergrad lab classes are set in concrete (I don't teach
any) and getting any kind of scripted analyses in those is a very long
term project, mostly due to the uneven distribution of the skills needed
to support it among the grad student instructors and TAs (and resistance
to change among faculty). One retirement at a time...
Ben
On 21/4/2015 11:11 AM, Robert M. Flight wrote:
hmmm, something I hadn't considered, thanks Jenny. I don't currently
teach beyond the odd class filling in for other faculty or doing a
session at our Journal Club, so this isn't something I had really
thought about until I was considering applying for an instructor
position that was asking for a teaching statement, and as I thought
about it, I started to wonder if there were ways to introduce these
concepts into an undergraduate curriculum starting in 1st year. So now
I'm looking to see if any examples exist.
-Robert
On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 2:03 PM Jennifer Bryan <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi Robert,
You should get in touch with Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel about this:
https://stat.duke.edu/~mc301/
She's using R Markdown, for example, in undergraduate courses.
One observation: In many institutions, undergraduate teaching falls
disproportionately on faculty, sessionals, adjuncts with high
teaching loads. Over the years, that limits the time and mental
energy the instructor for research and other non-teaching projects.
This cuts off prime opportunities to develop and use software
carpentry skills. This is especially true for the folks teaching
undergraduate science labs, i.e. they aren't necessarily
data/cs/stats people by training.
So, I think it's no coincidence that you see more of this at the
grad level. You're right, a lot of it *could* show up much earlier.
But, speaking for myself, I have the luxury of time and energy for
this and generally get deployed on graduate courses. It would be
great to figure out how to help this stuff trickle down more!
-- Jenny
On 2015-04-21, at 10:43 AM, "Robert M. Flight" <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> Does anyone know of any examples where software carpentry type
skills have been integrated into an undergraduate science
curriculum? It seems to me that the various skills taught in
software carpentry could be integrated into an undergraduate science
curriculum if done correctly, given the prevalence of data
manipulations that are frequently performed in undergraduate science
labs (chemistry titrations / conversions, physics equation fitting,
biology number manipulations), at least in my experience over 10
years ago. I don't imagine that things have changed, and have likely
gotten worse.
>
> I know that Jenny Bryan is integrating a lot of this stuff into
her advanced stats class (which is awesome), but the more I think
about it, it seems that it would be useful to introduce things
earlier rather than later.
>
> I would be very appreciative if anyone has any specific examples
from their own or others teaching.
>
> Regards,
>
> -Robert
>
> Robert M Flight, PhD
> Bioinformatics Research Associate
> Resource Center for Stable Isotope Resolved Metabolomics
> Markey Cancer Center
> University of Kentucky
> Lexington, KY
>
> Twitter: @rmflight
> Web: rmflight.github.io <http://rmflight.github.io>
> EM [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
> PH 502-509-1827
>
> The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds
new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny
..." - Isaac Asimov
>
Jennifer Bryan
Associate Professor
Department of Statistics and
the Michael Smith Laboratories
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC Canada
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