Hi April,
thanks for your insights. As a matter of fact, in my case the local
organizers were very forthcoming and implemented a pre-assessment form
before the workshop. Still, I had the feeling during the workshop that
this pre-assessment only covered the tip of the iceberg (as expected).
I guess the trade-off who to bore and whom to carry through is always on
the plate of the instructor. I'd have to say that being in a team of 2
helps at this point tremendously as the co-instructor is among the
"students" and simply can assist here and there.
If people have more feedback on the matter, I am happy to hear it. If
not, my gratitude to those that replied already.
Best,
Peter
On 10/27/2015 03:27 PM, April Wright wrote:
Hi Peter-
I've been in this exact same situation, though with a departmental
workshop, rather than an SWC one. It's hard, and I'm sorry that happened
to
you.
Since you're SWC, I think the first thing to do is ask the host. Often,
the
host has some specific ideas about what they want the learners to come
away
with, and that can help you steer the course.
What I did, in practice, was this: I spent way too much time helping
novices. I slowed down, got through less than half of the material, and
the
intermediates, who had actually chosen the correct class and paid a
nominal
fee for it were very unsatisfied. I really think that I made the wrong
call
by punishing people who carefully read the sign-up and prioritizing those
who didn't. There are a lot of resources out there to help people take
the
first steps in programming. There are fewer to help with the 'what's
next',
and I should have been more sensitive to that fact. What I should have
done
is told people who were working on novice-level skills that they were
welcome to stay and work, but that people working on the course material
would be assisted first.
On the next go around, I added a list of skills the learners needed to be
comfortable with to attend (previously, it had simply been a link to the
previous workshop) and a code snippet one of the students had written. I
let them know that this was the level of familiarity they needed to have
*with
Python* to attend, and that TAs would preferentially assist those who
were
mastering course skills over those who were mastering other material.
That worked, I only had one person for whom the course was inappropriate
(they were too high level) show up.
--a
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Postdoctoral Researcher
Iowa State University, EEOB
University of Kansas, EEB
251 Bessey Hall
Ames, IA 50011
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On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 8:23 AM, Michael J Jackson <
micha...@epcc.ed.ac.uk>
wrote:
Hi Peter,
If there are more people falling behind than you have helpers to handle,
then I'd just slow down. I'd (reluctantly) rather bore those who don't
want
a slower pace, than confuse those do.
cheers,
mike
Quoting Peter Steinbach <steinb...@scionics.de> on Tue, 27 Oct 2015
11:39:01 +0100:
Hi Raniere et al,
thanks for the pointers for recording the terminal history, I'd like to
get back to my more general question though ... how to give
participants
that are not up to the level of the course a chance to follow? I don't
wanna drag them all through, at some point there has to be a limit for
the
sake of the remaining crowd. But still, I'd like to hear people's
experience on this.
Best,
Peter
On 10/27/2015 11:23 AM, Raniere Silva wrote:
Hi Peter,
Could you share these scripts?
Please check
https://github.com/swcarpentry/site/pull/1124/files#diff-9e17f2fd404c84648654a4fc54a9a2ecR71
.
We are going to publish it this week.
I'd like to see if they'd capture a nano screen etc
(I presume not, but I'd like to try them anyhow).
Apologies if they were already shared with this community and I
overlooked them.
There are terminal screen recorder that can capture nano
but from my experience they don't work for what you want. =(
Cheers,
Raniere
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