I have attempted this at our level 3 (level 4 is honours year). It has some marginal success but there are limitations.
1) student skills and motivation. At a postgrad level students are much better prepared to take on the self learning that SC involves. They are also selected to be of the more able end of the curriculum. 2) background and time. A 2-day software carpentry workshop is comparable in learning delivery to a substantial chunk of a semester long course. It really doesn't go very far unless you are building on it with the appropriate repetition (which comes in naturally at postgrad level for the motivational reasons above) but is hard to do at undergrad where there are many other pressures working against you. You also start with a background where they do not see the application and hence the motivation and take up is lower. Having said that, for a certain cohort of students it would be an excellent opportunity. Dr David Martin Lecturer in Bioinformatics College of Life Sciences University of Dundee ________________________________ From: Discuss <[email protected]> on behalf of Robert M. Flight <[email protected]> Sent: 21 April 2015 18:43 To: Software Carpentry Discussion; Jennifer Bryan Subject: [Discuss] undergrad curriculum examples 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 The University of Dundee is a registered Scottish Charity, No: SC015096
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