Hi, I agree that programming lessons take on average longer than 3 hours. I think the best way to take the time estimates is as best-case scenarios: if nothing goes wrong (or you are an experienced instructor who can foresee and quickly fix the issues learners may have), you may teach the whole lesson in 3 hours. I'm personally on the slow side, but I don't mind to leave some topics uncovered.
I think that one problem may be that we are not paying enough attention to the instructor's guide. Now that our lessons are stable and well-tested, I think we should move all the experience we accumulated in there. For example, Git's instructor's guide [1] has merely a paragraph per topic, often pretty trivial. It could be useful to require that instructor's guides start with a section on how to teach the lesson on different time frames and styles, use of the Etherpad, which are the essential topics and challenges, and where to cut off if you need to. Best, Ivan [1] https://github.com/swcarpentry/git-novice/blob/gh-pages/instructors.md On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 10:54 AM, John Blischak <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Gerard, > > On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 10:53 AM, Gerard Capes > <[email protected]> wrote: > > I taught this material for the first time yesterday. All things > considered I think it went quite well. The main concerns I have are: > > 1. The amount of material - headers in the .md files all say 30 > mins. I can't see that you can go through it that quickly for a novice > class. This meant that even though I was teaching all day, I only got > through 4.5 out of 6 sections, and that was with cutting out some exercises > to save time. > > You are not alone here. These lessons do take a long time to teach. > The novice-inflammation lessons (Python, R, and MATLAB) were created > before the current lesson template was developed. According to the new > lesson template, each file is only supposed to take 10-15 minutes to > teach, and it is required to state an approximate teaching time. Since > these clearly take longer than 15 minutes but we don't have great time > estimates, I recall choosing 30 minutes at the top of each of the R > lessons to basically signal "This is *not* a 15 minute lesson". It > appears that both the Python and MATLAB lessons have also listed each > file as 30 minutes, so maybe that was a group decision we made. I > don't remember. > > In a half day (2.5-3 hours) with the r-novice-inflammation lessons > with a novice audience, I can usually make it through the first 3 > lessons. At that point, I've taught them some basic R concepts and > introduced the big ideas of functions and loops. > > > http://swcarpentry.github.io/r-novice-inflammation/01-starting-with-data.html > http://swcarpentry.github.io/r-novice-inflammation/02-func-R.html > http://swcarpentry.github.io/r-novice-inflammation/03-loops-R.html > > If we decide to devote another half day to r-novice-inflammation, I > can make it through the next 2 lessons. These introduce control flow > with if/else statements and then writing short command line programs, > respectively. > > http://swcarpentry.github.io/r-novice-inflammation/04-cond.html > http://swcarpentry.github.io/r-novice-inflammation/05-cmdline.html > > I see that the MATLAB and R lessons have diverged some, but hopefully > that should give you some perspective on how much can realistically be > covered. Greg initially created python-novice-inflammation to be > taught in only one half day session, and he has successfully > accomplished this in live workshops. > > > 2. Live coding - several learners asked if they could have the > notes (which I'd promised to give at the end). They didn't have enough time > to follow what I was typing - a copy of the notes would allow them to refer > back. I believe the Software Carpentry approach is only to share the notes > afterwards. Is this correct? > > I think both of your questions are related to the fact that "novices" > vary widely between different scientific fields and even between > workshops aimed at the same field. As I noted above, Greg has taught > python-novice-inflammation to novices in 3 hours. Clearly these > novices are different than the novices that you and I have taught, > where we struggle to finish the lesson in an entire day. I teach > molecular biologists, and a novice molecular biologist has no previous > programming experience and in general is only comfortable interacting > with their computer by pointing-and-clicking. There is a lot to learn > from the experiences of other SWC instructors, but you have to keep in > mind that they may be teaching to a very different audience of novices > than you, and you have to adjust accordingly. I live code, but I've > always given the learners access to the notes from the start. It is so > easy for novices to type something wrong and get completely lost for > the rest of the lesson, so I believe having the safety net to > copy-paste is essential. > > As another example, a piece of teaching advice I never understood was > the Etherpad. Other instructors report the robust conversations that > were happening on the Etherpad live during the lessons. I never > understood this. What novices are simultaneously typing along with the > instructor and chatting on the Etherpad? I've now abandoned the > Etherpad since it was rarely used and it was just one extra thing for > the learners to try and keep track of. After a few times teaching to > novices in your field, you'll get a better sense of what works and > what doesn't for them. > > To learn more about other instructors' experiences, I recommend the > blog posts from the Instructor Debriefing sessions or blog posts with > Feedback in the title. > > http://software-carpentry.org/blog/archive/ > > In short, your experience teaching these materials is completely > normal, so no need to worry you were doing something wrong. Keep up > the good work! > > Best, > > John > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org >
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