This agrees with my experience, also. I would only add that workshops that operate this way seem to engage student interest and participation better, and I think that it prepares the participants to think more analytically and _construct_ the material in their own minds rather than _receive_ the material from the presenter.
I also have only my impressions, and no numerical data for this. Full disclosure, most of my experience is with non-SWC material. -- bennet On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 3:25 PM, Pat Schloss <[email protected]> wrote: > I’ve done both with teaching R. I don’t have any data, but I far prefer the > top-down approach. > > My version of top-down is to give them code that works to make a standard > plot. That lets them make something tangible in the first 5 minutes. I then > have them look at the code and ask how they would change colors, plotting > symbols, etc. Then I ask them how they would make a new plot using a > different column from the data file. I then wash, rinse, repeat building in > new programming concepts to do different analyses and methods of visualizing > data. I far prefer this approach over building up from “Hello World” because > they get going immediately and because that’s how many of us learned to > program. At least for me, I learned by taking code that someone else > generated to do a task and hacked at it to suit my needs. Whenever I find a > new package, I take their vignette and hack at it to learn how the functions > work. > > It seems like most programming books are bottom-up while more domain-specific > materials are top-down. I agree that it would be very interesting to hear > other opinions and whether there are any data supporting one strategy or > another… > > Pat > > >> On Nov 11, 2016, at 3:07 PM, Peter Teuben <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> forgive me if this is something covered before but I'd like to contrast two >> opposite ways of teaching a language >> >> What i mean is to teach something like python, you can go through the >> rigorous language elements (which can be pretty boring) and build up your >> skills to the level that you can program. This I would call a bottom up >> style. >> >> The other approach is you pick a problem in the field of your students (in >> my case astronomy, so my example may not work for biology students), and >> disect it and teach them the language elements as you go. I would call this >> top down. >> >> Has this approach been tried and has it been found at least equally good? >> Of course the huge drawback is that it only applies to a small group of >> students. I'm curious to try this. >> >> >> - peter >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss
