Hi Bennet- I've been thinking a lot about intermediate training lately, and I was wondering, Bennet, if you could restate the problem as you see it?
There's the problem of what topics are covered. However, like Raniere said, SWC-branded workshops do all have to cover a set of material (shell, programming in R/Python, git). But it seems to me that your question might be how can you plan an intermediate workshop when you don't know if the previous instructors got through command-line programs, or if they only made it to defensive programming, to use the Python lessons as an example. That's a problem that I'm not sure how to fix. On a really fundamental level, I think instructors need to have the discretion to slow down and cover less material if they think that's warranted. One way that I have tackled this in the past (in a non-SWC workshop) is to have the intermediate workshop restricted to people who have taken the beginner workshop, or who contacted me and explained their situation. That's obviously somewhat unsatisfying, since it means that self-taught and other intermediates need to recognize that they are intermediates, and contact me (and I scale terribly). But that's the best solution as I see it - to plan materials that assume usage of the prior materials as a starting point, and to try to control the flow of people through whatever pipeline you set up. If you're in a situation where you can't control the flow of folks through whatever pipeline, I think the next best thing is to be explicit. Explicit about a) what skills you will assume (possibly with links to SWC materials on them, if applicable) and b) about what will be covered (i.e., what skills they will gain). You can also have people apply to a workshop, rather than sign-up for it. I recently taught a week-long immersive research course in my discipline, and we had people apply with a CV, and an explicit statement of what they wanted to get out of the course. This, however, runs into the same scaling issues - it took my co-instructor and I a really long time to pick our participants. In short: intermediate learning is challenging, since the definition of intermediate is relative. But there's a real drop-off in availability of materials after beginner courses, and I'm glad you're thinking about it. -- april On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 5:36 AM, Raniere Silva <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > > I would agree that indeterminacy of workshops exists because SWC has > > learned that not all lessons fit all disciplines or experience levels. A > quick > > example is that version control is a tough concept unless learners have > > done at least some coding and have either lost a lot of work or broken a > > piece of code and want desperately to go back to a previous copy that > > they can't find. So for a particular level of learner a workshop may > exclude > > git or it may not. I think this analogy applies to most tools. > > I agree with Cameron when he say "not all lessons fit all disciplines or > experience levels". > I only want to add two cents: > all Software Carpentry workshops need to cover Git (or Mercurial or > another version control system). On a workshop with novice learners you > probably will not cover branches but on a workshop with learners that > have done at least some coding they will probably ask the instructors > about branch. ;-) > > Cheers, > Raniere > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss >
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