Hi Peter- I've been in this exact same situation, though with a departmental workshop, rather than an SWC one. It's hard, and I'm sorry that happened to you.
Since you're SWC, I think the first thing to do is ask the host. Often, the host has some specific ideas about what they want the learners to come away with, and that can help you steer the course. What I did, in practice, was this: I spent way too much time helping novices. I slowed down, got through less than half of the material, and the intermediates, who had actually chosen the correct class and paid a nominal fee for it were very unsatisfied. I really think that I made the wrong call by punishing people who carefully read the sign-up and prioritizing those who didn't. There are a lot of resources out there to help people take the first steps in programming. There are fewer to help with the 'what's next', and I should have been more sensitive to that fact. What I should have done is told people who were working on novice-level skills that they were welcome to stay and work, but that people working on the course material would be assisted first. On the next go around, I added a list of skills the learners needed to be comfortable with to attend (previously, it had simply been a link to the previous workshop) and a code snippet one of the students had written. I let them know that this was the level of familiarity they needed to have *with Python* to attend, and that TAs would preferentially assist those who were mastering course skills over those who were mastering other material. That worked, I only had one person for whom the course was inappropriate (they were too high level) show up. --a --------- Postdoctoral Researcher Iowa State University, EEOB University of Kansas, EEB 251 Bessey Hall Ames, IA 50011 512.940.5761 http://wrightaprilm.github.io/ <http://wrightaprilm.github.io/pages/about_me.html> On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 8:23 AM, Michael J Jackson <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Peter, > > If there are more people falling behind than you have helpers to handle, > then I'd just slow down. I'd (reluctantly) rather bore those who don't want > a slower pace, than confuse those do. > > cheers, > mike > > > Quoting Peter Steinbach <[email protected]> on Tue, 27 Oct 2015 > 11:39:01 +0100: > > Hi Raniere et al, >> >> thanks for the pointers for recording the terminal history, I'd like to >> get back to my more general question though ... how to give participants >> that are not up to the level of the course a chance to follow? I don't >> wanna drag them all through, at some point there has to be a limit for the >> sake of the remaining crowd. But still, I'd like to hear people's >> experience on this. >> >> Best, >> Peter >> >> On 10/27/2015 11:23 AM, Raniere Silva wrote: >> >>> Hi Peter, >>> >>> Could you share these scripts? >>>> >>> >>> Please check >>> >>> https://github.com/swcarpentry/site/pull/1124/files#diff-9e17f2fd404c84648654a4fc54a9a2ecR71 >>> . >>> We are going to publish it this week. >>> >>> I'd like to see if they'd capture a nano screen etc >>>> (I presume not, but I'd like to try them anyhow). >>>> Apologies if they were already shared with this community and I >>>> overlooked them. >>>> >>> >>> There are terminal screen recorder that can capture nano >>> but from my experience they don't work for what you want. =( >>> >>> Cheers, >>> Raniere >>> >>> >> -- >> Peter Steinbach, Dr. rer. nat. >> HPC Developer, Scientific Computing Facility >> >> Scionics Computer Innovation GmbH >> Löscherstr. 16 >> 01309 Dresden >> Germany >> >> phone +49 351 210 2882 >> fax +49 351 202 707 04 >> www.scionics.de >> >> Sitz der Gesellschaft: Dresden (Main office) >> Amtsgericht - Registergericht: Dresden HRB 20337 (Commercial Registry) >> Ust-IdNr.: DE813263791 (VAT ID Number) >> Geschäftsführer: John Duperon, Jeff Oegema (Managing Directors) >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> >> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org >> >> >> > > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > Dr. Michael (Mike) Jackson [email protected] > Software Architect Tel: +44 (0)131 650 5141 > EPCC, The University of Edinburgh http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk > Software Sustainability Institute http://www.software.ac.uk > > > -- > The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in > Scotland, with registration number SC005336. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org >
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