[Ccsf-campus-staff] how did the event go?

Tue Mar 25 19:50:06 UTC 2014

On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 10:08 PM, Veronica Ray <veronica.l.ray at gmail.com>wrote:

> A lot of students made pull requests by the end of the git intro so it was
> far from a failure. I was actually amazed so many pull requests were made
> given that most people started with no git knowledge.
>
> I'm not aware of any 1 hour git/GitHub workshop that would not confuse or
> frustrate total beginners --- it's a very confusing and frustrating topic.
> But there are also lots of good online resources for understanding git (ex.
> Try Git, Git Immersion) that would have been better than the current
> curriculum.
>

Do you know if the open source communication tools preceded the git
activity?  It covers an intro to version control/the difference between
github and git and users and repos, etc.  In retrospect, we should put that
info into the git activity, not the end of the preceding activity, to make
sure it doesn't get skipped.

If you don't mind, I've love to hear about how you think Git Immersion
and/or Try Git would be an improvement over our curriculum.  Some specific
feedback could help us either improve our git tutorial activity, or help us
decide to switch to someone else's tutorial.

>
> I wasn't happy with my part of the contribution workshop. No one had used
> Rails before or had their computers set up for Rails development. Next time
> I would announce my part of the workshop and make sure interested students
> were set up to develop in Rails before Saturday. (Alternatively, I would
> have picked a language/framework that people in the workshop were familiar
> with.) I ended up working intensively with a couple people to set up their
> environments and walk through how I solved the issue. That was very
> rewarding.
>

Thank you so much for this feedback.  Our plan going forward is to email
students with a list of the projects that will be available to work on at
the event and encourage them to begin the setup process/contact the
maintainers and ask questions. I'm glad you still found part of the
experience rewarding.  Were there any issues with the setup documentation?
 If so, were you/the students able to improve the documentation?

>
> Next time I think it would be nice to have a list of  issues that the
> students could work on during the contribution workshop. They would need to
> be very very small and tailored to the skills/interests of the students
> attending.
>

This is usually part of our process, but I suppose it must have been missed
somehow.  We have a new organizational process as of a couple weeks ago, so
hopefully that will help us keep that from happening again.

I can understand why so many students left after the git workshop. The
> previous talks introduced a large amount of information and there was
> nothing clear to work on during the contribution part. I could see the
> contribution workshop being an optional second day for students with more
> programming experience and/or clear ideas about what they wanted to work.
>

Splitting off into two days might introduce logistical issues, but letting
students sign up for only one part or the other if they desire might be
more pleasant/effective for them.  I'll think about it.

Thank you so much for the feedback, Veronica and Maria!

best
Shauna

>
>
> Veronica
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 6:08 PM, Maria Pacana <maria.pacana at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Hi Shauna!
>>
>> The morning went well; people seemed engaged during the intro to IRC, and
>> I think they responded well to my talk<https://github.com/mariapacana/openhatch/blob/master/opensource.md>about finding / reaching out to OSS projects. Students seemed frustrated /
>> confused by the Git intro, which we pretty much did according to the
>> curriculum; a bunch of people got up and left after that. In the future, it
>> might help to give a conceptual, high-level explanation of Git (maybe
>> accompanied by a diagram on the whiteboard) so that students can have a
>> better mental picture of what all the incantations mean.
>>
>> During the contribution workshop, one group worked with Veronica on a bug
>> from Refuge Restrooms, while other people studied Git / researched other
>> open source projects. I think that dividing people up into the two tracks
>> was a great idea; it might've been good to do it even earlier (like before
>> the Git workshop). I don't think anyone made any OSS contributions that
>> day, but I definitely spoke to a couple people who were carefully
>> researching projects on OpenHatch / GitHub and drafting emails to the
>> maintainers.
>>
>> ~ Maria
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 10:55 AM, Shauna Gordon-McKeon <
>> shaunagm at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> When you get the chance, I'd love to hear how the event went on
>>> Saturday!  Did the logistics etc go smoothly?  Did you have enough mentors?
>>>  What were the best/worst parts of the day?  I'm especially interested in
>>> hearing about the curriculum changes you made and how they went over.
>>>
>>> best,
>>> Shauna
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> ccsf-campus-staff mailing list
>>> ccsf-campus-staff at lists.openhatch.org
>>> http://lists.openhatch.org/mailman/listinfo/ccsf-campus-staff
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> ccsf-campus-staff mailing list
>> ccsf-campus-staff at lists.openhatch.org
>> http://lists.openhatch.org/mailman/listinfo/ccsf-campus-staff
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Veronica Ray
> Software Engineer at Bizo
> Duke University '13
> (210) 416-9693
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> ccsf-campus-staff mailing list
> ccsf-campus-staff at lists.openhatch.org
> http://lists.openhatch.org/mailman/listinfo/ccsf-campus-staff
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openhatch.org/pipermail/ccsf-campus-staff/attachments/20140325/2c62cdaf/attachment.html>