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Suggestion: less changing of data files? #802
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I taught part of the same lesson and whole-heartedly agree with @diyadas 's comments. In addition to her thoughts, I find the organization of the directory a bit ridiculous in a workshop in which we're teaching good practices. The main directory contains My prefered organization would be to have a structure more like:
Perhaps other projects could be added to capture the types of data used by other disciplines. I feel like the foregoing is a defensible organization. There could even be a brief section were we reorganize Nelle's files so they're better organized. Also note that I feel as though this lesson lesson's overarching story got diluted as we moved through the episodes. As someone who has a more improvisational pedagogical style, this was particularly challenging for me. The current organization does not lend itself to anything other than rote following of the written lesson plan. Having a clearer progression through the directories/files would allow me put more of my attention into teaching and less into trying to figure out where we're going next. |
Many good points raised above.
in the root directory, and others in various subdirectories. |
I taught this lesson yesterday and had the same reaction. The main story line (Nelle's analysis) was sometimes buried pretty deep in within each episode. As mentioned above, if you aren't following the lesson exactly, these examples are hard to keep track of and easily lost. I think the lesson would be a lot more effective for some students if the examples focus more on Nelle's research pipeline and use the other files and directories for more secondary exercises. |
I agree completely with the sentiment here. I just taught this lesson this morning, and the jumping around within the data-shell directory without any consistent narrative was extremely jarring. I ended up skipping the Nelle narrative completely (since the episodes tend to introduce a command with the non-Nelle files and that's all I had time for; see #928 about timing overall). Unfortunately, this leave the whole thing without any scientific examples. Specific recommendations:
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We have an old issue which is closely related: #371 Audit filesystem/lesson examples for consistency The issue of the coherence of the Nelle framing narrative is something that's come up a lot (I thought we might have an issue tracking it, but I couldn't find one). Unfortunately, fixing it is a huge task which is by nature difficult to work on in a piecemeal fashion. I'd be curious how other Carpentry lessons handle this issue. Are there others that do a better job of maintaining a running narrative - and if so, how? Do many lessons just not bother with one, and instead choose to keep each episode independent and modular? (The only other lesson I have a passing familiarity with is the version control one. Last time I taught it, I believe it had some kind of Universal Classic Monsters running motif, but it felt highly vestigial, even compared to Nelle.) |
Hi 👋 @swcarpentry/r-novice-inflammation-maintainers here I think like this seems like an appropriate use case for a draft PR, possibly in consultation with the curriculum advisory committee? We’ve not done a reorg this extensive but we did have a draft PR open for a pretty long time I think? |
I just want to address the changing folders aspect of this, not the bad example of file/folder names: When I first taught the lesson, I thought it was pretty ridiculous to change file folders a lot. But, then I remembered that I am an advanced user of Bash. The lesson provides good practice for novice learners on changing file folders. I think that's the point: to connect the muscle memory with the conceptual framework of folder organization and gain confidence on navigating the shell. |
Is this addressed by #1233 ? |
I taught this lesson yesterday and we spent a lot of time changing data from episode to episode:
I understand that there is value in
but I think this might underestimate the cognitive load of maintaining an understanding what types of data are in each file - what was the experiment conducted. I spent a lot of time reintroducing data sets rather than functions.
Maybe each episode could pick a single dataset to focus on? That way we do change directories and work with different types of data, but also have the opportunity to focus on the functions within episodes.
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