[OH-Dev] OpenHatch missions pedagogy audit results

[Karen Rustad]

Hey folks!

One of our release goals this release was an audit to see to what
extent our training missions meet the standards set in our pedagogy
guide (http://openhatch.org/wiki/Missions_pedagogy).

I've finished auditing the first two missions. Here are the results thus far!

-- Karen

----

===In general===

Check mark UI is horribly confusing. The checkbox appears whether or
not you've completed the mission / step of the mission -- resetting
the mission doesn't fix this. Faded / greyed-out check marks? Super
weird / non-standard. Let's not do that!

When I want to go from a mission back to the missions page, I
instinctively look for a back link at the top left. Neither the header
image nor anything else in that area of the page is a back link,
however, which is confusing. The back link is instead at the top
right, and hard to find.

===Tar mission audit===

is_working: FAIL. The hinted command for the first part does not work
on Macs. In addition, uploading (and, thus, the entire assessment
functionality) is busted. See https://openhatch.org/bugs/issue632.
[Editor's note: Jessica has a patch for this!]

Curricular triangle: Pass.

Plot: FAIL. No plot or even amusing examples.

Quick reference: FAIL. No reference, though the current 'Hints' doc is
somewhat similar.

Levels of hints: FAIL. The highest level of help is the *first* one
that the user sees -- the tooltip with the exact command needed to
perform the operation. The "Hints" doc *would* be a good intermediary
level of help, but it's positioned at the end of the mission -- you'd
never look to it before looking at the tooltip!

I would argue that a link to relevant outside documentation ought to
be the first stage of hints for all missions. (Then our own guide,
then verbatim commands/instructions.) This mission, in any case, does
not have that.

No absolute blocking: Pass; the two parts aren't dependent on each other.

===Diff/patch mission audit===

is_working: FAIL. The second step fails due to whitespace errors (not
anything meaningful) most of the time. We really ought to give people
more meaningful feedback other than "No." -- otherwise people have no
idea what to fix. Maybe a line number where the failure is? Or show
the diff between what you submitted and what you were supposed to
submit (possibly in some obfuscated way, possibly behind a Hint link)?

Curricular triangle: Pass, mostly. See the is_working discussion: on
the second step, what we're assessing doesn't quite match what we're
trying to teach.

Plot: FAIL. It could easily be changed to have a plot -- the third
part talks about recipes in a very cute way -- but it doesn't
currently.

Quick reference: FAIL.

Levels of hints: FAIL. On the first and second steps, all hints are
available from the very beginning. There is a link to the patch man
page, though, which is nice. Hints regarding grep use and how to send
a patch to a file would help.

No absolute blocking: Pass.