Practice Pool Title
by Instructor

README and outline deadline: YYYY-MM-DD

As part of the 'outline' process, you will need to complete the following tasks:

• Edit this README by filling in the information for step 1.
• Update the requirements.R file in your practice pool repository on GitHub. If you need to install any additional libraries, you may need to update the requirements.sh file as well. Check with your contact as needed.

Practice development resources

• Authoring documentation: https://authoring.datacamp.com/
• Practice admin page: https://www.datacamp.com/teach/content/challenges

Step 1: Write practice pool outline

How to create the practice pool outline

• Make the outline of concepts in this template.
  • Make a copy of the file before you start editing it.
  • Get a shareable link for your document, allowing anyone with the link to access the document.
  • Paste the link below (section Your outline).
• For each concept, specify the concept parts: the important things to understand about this concept (e.g. nuances, syntax, arguments, data types of arguments / return types, differences with other functions, …).
• For each concept part, what is the exercise that is going to test exactly this?
• Add a challenge type to each exercise, ensuring a mix of various challenge types in each chapter.
• A typical practice pool contains at least 10 exercises per course chapter.

Your outline

• Link to your outline: ___

Outline checklist

• Is it clear from the outline which concepts will be tested?
• Are the most important things tested?
• Is it clear what exactly is going to be tested?
• Is there a good mix of exercise types?

Step 2: Create exercises for one chapter on the Teach Editor

Content vision

It is the goal of practice exercises to

• check if the student has a correct understanding of the course,
• check whether the student remembers the most important things taught in the course, and
• allow the student to exercise until s/he can apply what s/he's learned in the course without having to look things up.

Content guidlines

• Each pool should have
  • at least 40 exercises, equally distributed over the different chapters of a course,
  • a good mix of the different exercise types, and
  • a good mix of conceptual/general questions (e.g. why use this package over that package), and detailed questions (e.g. what is the name of the function of package x to do y?).
• Each pool should test
  • the most important misunderstandings of a course, and
  • whether the student remembers the most important concepts and their meaning.
• Each question (both conceptual and detailed) should be use case-based.

Content checklist

• Does each exercise have a name? (i.e. --- type:MultipleChoiceChallenge key:[unique_key] ## [explanatory_name])
• Does each exercise check exactly what you want to test?
• Are all distractors distracting? Is it realistic someone might think they are the correct answer?
• Will the student spend most time answering the question, instead of understanding what is being asked?
• Do the different versions of an exercise test the same concept?
• Do all sentences start with a capital letter and end with a punctuation mark?
• Is the code formatted nicely, using newlines where necessary? Review the mobile preview in a screen with the dimensions of a smartphone (type iPhone SE) when you're in doubt.
• Does the output not contain more than 5 lines?
• Do tables contain no more than 3 columns?
• Are all exercise keys unique?
• Is every BlanksChallenge suited for a typing exercise (i.e. does it contain sufficient information)?
• Is the context (for coding exercises, if used) or assignment (for multiple choice questions) concise? These should not exceed 200 characters.
• DataCamp values diversity; do you use diverse protagonists in your context (if any)?

Step 3: Create exercises for the remaining chapters on the Teach Editor

Follow the content vision, guidelines and checklist outlined above.