Thanks everybody, this discussion is highlighting a lot of interesting points and materials. Just one remark: the course that inspired my question was not a SWC one, it was a training on analysis softwares (i.e. cytoscape and others) for biologists. But since education methods are common to SWC, training like that one and the more formal university-level courses, I was interested in what kind of practice/hands-on could be more effective for the two main purposes - avoid scaring the students and, possibly, encourage them into be positive while approaching the topic - maximize the amount of knowledge and skills gained in the course
Thanks again! Best, Giuseppe 2016-03-10 7:40 GMT+01:00 W. Trevor King <[email protected]>: > On Sun, Mar 06, 2016 at 05:41:12PM +0000, Code, Warren wrote: >> … the Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark article [3 in Trevor's comment] >> can be a bit of a tricky entry point into the literature… > > Better (ideally open) entry points are welcome ;). It looks like > there is more good stuff and a number of references in [1], although > that lacks a DOI, clear author information, and possibly peer review. > >> For the SWC lesson provided as an example here, there was certainly >> substantial guidance [snip scaffolding] they were asked to practice >> the kinds of things that people encounter in scientific computing >> (dealing with unknown data files, grappling with unexpected bugs, >> etc.) and had relatively on-demand support from the helpers and >> other participants. > > I agree on the potential for good scaffolding, although it's easy for > an hour of student-lead exercises to end up being “throw them into the > deep end” instead of “the shallow end of the pool is over there, > instructors will be circulating, and lifeguards are standing by for > anyone that calls out or looks distressed”. I think Giuseppe's: > > * “by themselves” in the subject, > * “some were stuck at the first [problem]” and “forced to think about > the problems they were facing and to ask for help” in the body. > > gave me the impression that this workshops dispensed with the > circulating instructors and just kept the lifeguards. For some people > that will be fine. But folks are probably in a face-to-face SWC > workshop because they're not comfortable working through the SWC > lessons (or other online tutorials) on their own, so I think it's > useful to have more instructor/helper-initiated interaction. > >> [snip reasonable thoughts about scaling practice periods with >> exercise complexity]. If there is a widespread difficulty that >> isn't terribly interesting to the main ideas, like the GUI bugs, >> maybe having a shorter cycle of "try this - did everyone get this >> error - this is why, there's this bug" would be warranted before the >> longer period working alone. In my experience, the only practical >> way to discover these sort of difficulties is to run the lesson, >> collect that sort of information, and do it differently the next >> time. :) > > I'd certainly recommend avoiding known library/tooling bugs in the > first two days that folks are coding. The existing SWC lessons are > fairly narrowly scoped (e.g. see the “other 90%” phrasing [2]), and a > tool with novice-noticeable bugs in the most fundamental 10% is > probably not a good tool to introduce to novice programmers ;). But > yeah, sometimes it's not clear that a particular exercise will be > confusing until you put it in front of people, so +1 on emphasizing > evolutionary lesson polishing. > > Cheers, > Trevor > > [1]: http://www.deansforimpact.org/the_science_of_learning.html > > https://github.com/swcarpentry/instructor-training/blob/58c6942bc6d910d7f886098c231b4d107c9ff0c3/papers/science-of-learning-2015.pdf > Deans for Impact (2015). The Science of Learning. Austin, TX: Deans > for Impact. > [2]: > https://github.com/swcarpentry/python-novice-inflammation/blob/v5.3/instructors.md#overall > > -- > This email may be signed or encrypted with GnuPG (http://www.gnupg.org). > For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
