[Events] Software Carpentry events - status & TODOs

[Judy Tuan]

Also regarding 20% bored and 20% lost: Railsbridge workshops in SF break
into small groups based on experience and skill level, and have dedicated
teachers and TAs who want to teach different skill levels. We even have a
new-ish "intermediate curriculum" for participants who've been through
several workshops or already code in another language, but even for the
multiple groups that are going through the original "beginner's
curriculum," it helps to have different groups that move through it at
different paces. We have found this to be incredibly successful in reducing
bored/lost syndrome.

Also, we usually have a very high "instructor (teacher plus TAs)" to
participant ratio. I wonder if this is achievable in the scientist
community that software-carpentry appears to do stuff in--I bet it is!

There's been a LOT of iterating over this process in the Railsbridge
workshops. Separating into groups by skill level is really important so
that we can organize the participants and teachers better on the day of the
event. You never know what you're gonna get, so the teachers have to be
flexible (sometimes you have tons and tons of beginners, sometimes you have
tons of advanced) but somehow it always works out in the end =) Also, we
make it a point to say often and loudly that it's totally fine to pack up
and move classes if you are bored or lost, and encourage people to come
back as volunteers (because that's the best way to learn!)

We learned a lot of stuff about the process of getting participants to
self-report their skill level:

* It doesn't work to just ask people, in the participant questionnaire, "do
you think you're beginner, intermediate, or advanced?"
-- People have no idea what those mean.
-- People (especially women!) have a tendency to underestimate their
"expertise" in these settings (studies show).

* It works better to give examples of what they mean.
-- Write down the specific terms.
-- People can read the descriptions and be like "oh I can do that" and then
self-assign a level accordingly.
-- This came out of us asking people "do you know how and why to run a
migration?" and things like that to assess their levels and sort them into
classes! So there's been a LOT of thought put into what things we list.
-- See http://bridgetroll.herokuapp.com/ for our live example. You have to
sign up and click on "attend as a student" on an upcoming event to see the
list, which is in the student questionnaire, and you have to mouse over the
color levels to get more info. I should find out if the text is outside of
the login wall somewhere. For now, I can copy it out....

Blue: Totally New to Programming
- You have little to no experience with the terminal or a graphical IDE
- You might have done a little bit with HTML or CSS, but not necessarily
- You're unfamiliar with terms like methods, arrays, lists, hashes, or
dictionaries

Green: Somewhat New to Programming
- You may have used the terminal a little -- to change directories, for
instance
- You might have done an online programming tutorial or two
- You don't have a lot of experience with Rails
- You know what a method is
- You are probably unfamiliar with the MVC pattern

Gold: Some Rails Experience
- You're comfortable using the terminal, but not necessarily a Power User
- You have a general understanding of MVC, perhaps from a prior workshop or
tutorial
- You know how to define a method in Ruby
- You have a decent handle on Ruby arrays and hashes

Orange: Other Programming Experience
- You're proficient in another language and understand general programming
concepts, like collections and scope
- You're new to Ruby and Rails
- You might be familiar with version control and basic web architecture

Purple: Ready for the Next Challenge
- You've exhausted the fun of the Suggestotron/Intro Rails curriculum
- You're comfortable with the terminal
- You want to problem-solve instead of copying other's code
- You want to build an app without using scaffolds


* Using numbers for levels is intimidating to some people (they sometimes
insist "no, I'm not good enough to be a III!" but then are bored in "II"
which is a shame). That's why we use colors now.


Anyway, I am REALLY INTERESTED in this stuff. It's really important to
streamline the self-reporting process so the day of the workshop can be
filled with as much learning as possible.

I also think there should be more cross-pollination between all of the
different people working on volunteer-training new people (the various
Railsbridge communities, OH, software-carpentry, all the bootcamps
everywhere, all the tutorial-sites, etc). Do you guys do this, too? It
would be a shame to have duplicated effort (though I guess not, really,
because diversity is good, haha)! Do you have any feedback? Would you
phrase things differently? We put a lot of emphasis on being as friendly as
possible. Please let us know what you think!!

Yay!!!
~judy



On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 4:21 AM, satyaakam goswami <satyaakam at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 1:15 AM, Sumana Harihareswara <
> sumanah at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> http://software-carpentry.org/blog/2013/05/where-we-are.html
>>
>> http://software-carpentry.org/blog/2013/05/planning-for-the-break.html
>>
>> People who run OH events may like to read this. One bit that intrigued
>> me: "Learners come to us with a very wide range of prior knowledge and
>> abilities, and as a result, we figure that 20% are bored and 20% are
>> lost at any time. We'd like to start offering separate boot camps for
>> complete novices and can-already-kind-of-program people, but we can't
>> rely on them to self-assess their ability (they don't know what they
>> don't know), and if we give them any kind of proficiency test, it scares
>> away the ones with weaker skills who need us most."
>>
>
> had a glance at the curriculum its too much packed and i can imagine it
> must be moving at the speed of jet :-) , i do not subscribe to this
> approach , i have found the buddy system works the best in these kind of
> groups. I explicitly say either the whole classes passes or they all fail .
> Not that they get credits etc... but in the spirit of learning . Humans are
> good at aping i do not mind even if they do that for starters the meaning
> why we are doing it slowly  creeps in over a period of time.
>
> of course time is one constraint we all have to deal with it , but this is
> where mailing lists and irc comes to rescue . i think spreading it out over
> a period of time and being in constant touch helps.
>
> there is one more concept i follow i took it from Plant Nurseries  , when
> the plant grows to a certain size it is moved from one bed to another.
>
> so i can relate a bit to what they are suggesting as moving the
> experienced or just experienced together but do we have a some tech to keep
> them like that in the virtual world too. i think this is where tech can
> help .
>
>
> -Satya
> fossevents.in
>
>
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