Hello, This is been a fascinating discussion so thanks to everyone that has provided feedback. Our introduction to R series has been adapted from the DC Ecology lessons. I mention GitHub during the project management sections. We set up a repository on GitHub and I talk about managing this repository both from the perspective of Rstudio and GitHub desktop. Personally I’ve never seen the value of teaching new programmers how to use GIT at the command line when there are so many other options. Our students have found this section really useful, so am going to develop this into a standalone class on reproducibility in research. If anyone has some suggestions I would love to hear them.
Cheers Doug Joubert On Thu, Oct 17, 2019 at 17:34 Peter Humburg <peter.humb...@mq.edu.au> wrote: > We have started teaching a modified version of the R DC curriculum that > teaches Git instead of SQL (because that seems to be more relevant to the > majority of our audience). We rely entirely on the RStudio git GUI for > this. Although that is a pretty limited interface but not having to learn > an additional tool (or command line usage) helps to make git more > accessible. Another change we have made is that we don't teach git as a > separate lesson. There is a brief introduction to git but the majority of > it is taught by demonstrating its use throughout the R part of the course. > Based on feedback from the learners this has helped to reduce confusion and > made git more accessible. Admittedly, the git part of the course covers > only the very basics but the hope is that it will get a larger proportion > of the learners to actually use git. I don't have any hard data on this but > based on what they say immediately after the course, the proportion of > participants who are considering using git certainly seems to be higher > than after an SWC course that uses the standard git module. > > Cheers, > Peter > > *Dr Peter Humburg* > > Statistician > > *Faculty of Human Sciences* > > AHH Level 5 > > Macquarie University NSW 2109 > > T: +61 2 9850 9848 > > E: peter.humb...@mq.edu.au > > ------------------------------ > *From:* Brooks Kieffer, Elizabeth Jamene <jamen...@ku.edu> > *Sent:* Thursday, 17 October 2019 3:21 AM > *To:* discuss <discuss@lists.carpentries.org> > *Subject:* [discuss] Insight on Data Carpentry and Git? > > > Hi everyone, > > I’m reading the Baker *et al* article about the initial instance of > Library Carpentry (Baker, J., *et al*, (2016). Library Carpentry: > Software skills training for library professionals. *LIBER Quarterly, 26*(3), > 141–162. https://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10176 > <https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/b-LfCk815RCr8x1jU2B1k9?domain=doi.org>). > In the Next Steps section, the authors mention learners’ struggles with Git > during this workshop, and note that other curricula exclude Git because of > its difficulty. Specifically: “…this is a finding of comparable training > programmes and is a reason for Data Carpentry not teaching Git and GitHub” > (p. 158). > > > > There isn’t a citation for the information about why Data Carpentry > doesn’t teach Git and GitHub, and the Teal *et al* article describing > Data Carpentry doesn’t mention Git (Teal, T. K., * et al*, (2015). Data > Carpentry: Workshops to Increase Data Literacy for Researchers. *International > Journal of Digital Curation*, *10*, 135–143. > https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v10i1.351 > <https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/tGVBClx1OYUA0Qp8f9VHEt?domain=doi.org> > ). > > > > I would appreciate any insight and/or links to discussions specifically > about this decision to exclude Git from Data Carpentry. I’m not interested > in debating the decision. Rather, I’m working on a paper on teaching Git; > documentation of this discussion would be helpful supporting information > for the paper’s opening contention that Git is difficult to both teach and > learn (something that’s not news to this group!). > > > > Thanks very much in advance, > > Jamene > > > > Jamene Brooks-Kieffer > > Data Services Librarian > > University of Kansas Libraries > > 785-864-5238 > > jamen...@ku.edu > > she/her/hers > > > > *The Carpentries <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/latest>* / discuss / > see discussions <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss> + > participants <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/members> + > delivery > options <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/subscription> > Permalink > <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/T914cb72e74e12319-Md5e5bf51f169d5d158430ffd> > ------------------------------------------ The Carpentries: discuss Permalink: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/T914cb72e74e12319-Me33a72560e08881df0960460 Delivery options: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/subscription
