Continue with 2 separate workshops? Or go back to a single one?

[Melissa Xie]

Now that we've successfully done 1 round of a 2-part workshop. I'd love to get some feedback as to how we feel about either keeping the 2-workshop format or going back to having a single one.

The 2 workshops are great because it's less of an information-overload. However, my biggest concern is maintenance.

Currently, our curricula could still use a lot of work. I've mentioned this to some people before, but it'd really be great if we could get the curricula to a state where we could just do very minor changes in prep for an upcoming workshop. I'm not sure as to what everyone's bandwidth is like, but I feel like it might take us a while to get there.

On the other hand, if we reverted back to using a single curriculum, I'd like to use the one developed by the broader RailsBridge community: http://docs.railsbridge.org/intro-to-rails. It is more actively worked on (and anyone can contribute).

The downside to using this curriculum is that there may be references to things that aren't specific to us. Alternatively, we can do some forking, which we've done in the past. The biggest amount of maintenance here is making sure we're up to date.

So what are everyone's thoughts on this?

-- Melissa

[Abby Howell]

I continue to believe that a six-hour workshop on Rails isn't the best way to introduce actual beginners to the world of computer programming, and I worry that we'll scare people off by making coding seem inaccessible rather than welcoming beginners into the fold with an empowering introduction that makes them want to learn more.

I think the biggest downside to the RailsBridge curriculum is the feedback that we've gotten that it goes too fast and is too overwhelming for people without a background in software development. 

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[Daniel Choi]

I think the criticism of the original curriculum Abby is articulating is
weighty enough to be raised on the general Google groups for
Railsbridge. It's worth Railsbridge-wide discussion:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/railsbridge-workshops

I encourage you to cross post there Abby.


Dan

On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 05:19 PM, Abby Howell <abby.g...@gmail.com> wrote:

> from: Abby Howell <abby.g...@gmail.com>
> date: Wed, Jul 16 05:19 PM -04:00 2014
> to: Melissa Xie <m...@melissaxie.com>
> cc: "railsbridge-...@googlegroups.com" <railsbridge-...@googlegroups.com>
> subject: Re: Continue with 2 separate workshops? Or go back to a single one?

>
> I continue to believe that a six-hour workshop on Rails isn't the best way
> to introduce actual beginners to the world of computer programming, and I
> worry that we'll scare people off by making coding seem inaccessible rather
> than welcoming beginners into the fold with an empowering introduction that
> makes them want to learn more.
>
> I think the biggest downside to the RailsBridge curriculum is the feedback
> that we've gotten that it goes too fast and is too overwhelming for people
> without a background in software development.
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 12:23 PM, Melissa Xie <m...@melissaxie.com> wrote:
>
>> Now that we've successfully done 1 round of a 2-part workshop. I'd love to
>> get some feedback as to how we feel about either keeping the 2-workshop
>> format or going back to having a single one.
>>
>> The 2 workshops are great because it's less of an information-overload.

>> However, my biggest concern is *maintenance*.

---
Sent from Vmail
http://danielchoi.com/software/vmail.html

[Janet Riley]

I posted our intro Ruby curriculum back to the main RailsBridge repo at https://github.com/railsbridge/docs/tree/master/sites/en/ruby , so it's part of the main branch again ( excluding VirtualBox instructions, which can or may have been broken out into a separate lesson set). 

Overall I favor using the main RailsBridge curriculum where it fits and making improvements there.  People's efforts tend to be bursty. If it's in the main repo, there's a bigger contributor base to spread the work over.    Improving the main line makes the material available to a wider audience as well.  If it's tough for me to make sense of a page, it's tough for the next person taking the workshop too. 

Apart from curriculum maintenance,  I think breaking the material into two made it easier to understand and was well received.

Janet

 

[Melissa Xie]

I agree with all of this.

The wider RailsBridge curricula does in fact include the Ruby curriculum that we had put together, so we can already start forking and making changes to it. It would just be great if we could convince everyone to make this a 2-parter.

Abby, I think you might be able articulate this stuff best so if you could cross post as Dan suggested, that would be awesome. I'm not sure if the group is open to the public to post, but let me know if it isn't and I'll someone on there.

Melissa

[Decklin Foster]

I like the idea of reducing maintenance work by using the curriculum
that is actively developed by the community. With a fork, sometimes
people temporarily have more bandwidth to add ideas but then those
things get abandoned. And since not every corner is regularly tested,
there can be surprises (like, hey, here's a whole gem missing).

The information-overload factor is a problem, but maybe improving the
curriculum quality and our familiarity with it can help us present it at
a better pace, and make a combined workshop more successful. Maybe we
should try to get together and test-drive the community version with
some people acting as students?

Since everyone has different levels of experience, maybe we could, at
the workshop, try a breakout session for students struggling with
programming itself that avoids heaping all the concepts of web
development on top of that (like, just do the dice game). Or maybe it
matters less than I thought if people understand all the web concepts?

I'm heading out to the Girl Develop It code & coffee thing at Clover HSQ
in a bit, and was going to try to talk to an organizer there about what
they've learned from developing an Intro to Ruby class (it looks like an
install night + 4 weeknight thing, and covering Rails -- also starting
tonight!).

I should have a little time now and more in the earlier part of next
month for curriculum work. I also have a reorganization of the download
instructions that I need to make a PR out of -- anyone have time to look
at that?

Melissa Xie writes:

> Now that we've successfully done 1 round of a 2-part workshop. I'd love to
> get some feedback as to how we feel about either keeping the 2-workshop
> format or going back to having a single one.
>
> The 2 workshops are great because it's less of an information-overload.

> However, my biggest concern is *maintenance*.

>
> Currently, our curricula could still use a lot of work. I've mentioned this
> to some people before, but it'd really be great if we could get the
> curricula to a state where we could just do very minor changes in prep for
> an upcoming workshop. I'm not sure as to what everyone's bandwidth is like,
> but I feel like it might take us a while to get there.
>
> On the other hand, if we reverted back to using a single curriculum, I'd
> like to use the one developed by the broader RailsBridge
> community: http://docs.railsbridge.org/intro-to-rails. It is more actively
> worked on (and anyone can contribute).
>
> The downside to using this curriculum is that there may be references to
> things that aren't specific to us. Alternatively, we can do some forking,
> which we've done in the past. The biggest amount of maintenance here is
> making sure we're up to date.
>
> So what are everyone's thoughts on this?
>
> -- Melissa
>

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things change.
dec...@red-bean.com

[Daniel Choi]

Splitting the workshop into tracks is actually a part of the original
Railsbridge formula that Railsbridge Boston never implemented. That may
be part of this problem.

See, e.g.,
https://github.com/railsbridge/docs/wiki/Class-level-grouping-guide




On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 05:47 PM, Decklin Foster <dec...@red-bean.com> wrote:

> from: Decklin Foster <dec...@red-bean.com>
> date: Thu, Jul 17 05:47 PM -04:00 2014
> to: railsbridge-...@googlegroups.com

> subject: Re: Continue with 2 separate workshops? Or go back to a single one?
>

[Janet Riley]

On Thursday, July 17, 2014 5:47:44 PM UTC-4, Decklin Foster wrote:

Since everyone has different levels of experience, maybe we could, at
the workshop, try a breakout session for students struggling with
programming itself that avoids heaping all the concepts of web
development on top of that (like, just do the dice game). Or maybe it
matters less than I thought if people understand all the web concepts?

I've been reading about how to teach at software-carpentry.org , a group that runs Python workshops for scientists.  They run 12 week how-to-teach online workshops, which I hope to participate in.  Software Carpentry says the most important thing is to help beginners develop a good mental model, which is both building up an idea and detecting where it doesn't fit your existing mental models.  

Teaching the underlying concepts keeps the workshop from being a paint-by-numbers exercise.   It's a challenge to provide the right level of detail that lets people understand without being overwhelmed. 

Re: tracks - 

In the last Ruby workshop we got feedback that some people like to learn socially rather than heads down in a tutorial.  As another dimension of tracks, it would be good to have a corner for a group of social learners and TA to do an out-loud session.

 

I'm heading out to the Girl Develop It code & coffee thing at Clover HSQ
in a bit, and was going to try to talk to an organizer there about what
they've learned from developing an Intro to Ruby class (it looks like an
install night + 4 weeknight thing, and covering Rails -- also starting
tonight!).

That's right, they're starting up a new round.  Did you learn anything interesting? 

 

I should have a little time now and more in the earlier part of next
month for curriculum work. I also have a reorganization of the download
instructions that I need to make a PR out of -- anyone have time to look
at that?

Is it just instructions? I can look on Sunday.

Janet

 

[Daniel Choi]

I'll cast my vote in favor of reverting to one-day Rails curriculum. I think we should be OK that attendees don't totally understand what they are doing in the workshop. We should tolerate some confusion, as long as it is outweighed by fun, participation, community, friendliness, encouragement, connections, and support and follow-up for any attendee who wants to continue learning and progressing after the workshop.

I visited the RailsGirls website and read about their workshop philosophy this morning. RailsGirls is OK with people attaining a fairly superficial understanding by the end of the workshop. They recognize that it's ridiculous to teach people how to build Rails apps in one day. But instead of holding onto that goal and increasing the number of workshop days, they simply change the mission. The main goal is to just slap a Rails app together and get it working -- and enough excitement hopefully ensues. Their workshop guide says: "Programming per se isn’t central - you can’t really learn to speak Chinese in one day, in a similar manner you can only learn the basic vocabulary and expressions in coding. The goal of every event is to make something visible!"

I also want to quote former Railsbridge Boston organizer Jason Draper. At a meeting he made a memorable point. The Railsbridge workshop isn't really about teaching people how to program, Jason said. It's more like a movie trailer for programming. It's about getting people's feet wet, getting them excited, and connecting them to mentors and the community. If we achieve that, we've done our job, even if people leave the workshop feeling like they've been whipped through a rollercoaster ride.

Dan

[Dan Pickett]

I couldn’t agree more, Dan!

To me, it comes down to the constraint of time and our primary mission/objective. I believe our job is all about enticement and garnering interest in programming as something to explore. By my observation, demonstrating the power of web development through the one day Rails curriculum seems to have the most impact on attendees towards that end. While there is a moderate state of overwhelm, I feel like we get a lot more of the “whoa, that’s cool” when participants actually deploy a functional web app. A supportive and assistive group of volunteers seems to help the overwhelm as well.

We could potentially mitigate some of the information overload with a post workshop curriculum that goes into more detail about each step. This would keep attendees engaged with us, and would help to clarify some of the items that were fuzzy or glossed over.

All that being said, I definitely think there’s opportunity for another paradigm for those that want to do a deeper dive or explore ruby in further detail. I just don’t think the day and half time box would position us for success there. To share some learnings from Launch Academy, we find it really takes a few weeks for folks to develop a “programmer’s mindset” where they start to think procedurally. I personally think a 1 or 2 night / week, 3 or 4 week long Intro to Programming would serve aspiring rubyists more effectively as a follow on to the Rails workshop. I know the folks at GDI have had some positive results from such a schedule.

Best,

Dan

--

[Daniel Choi]

In addition to what Dan Pickett said about putting the RBB workshop in
the context of the larger learning ecosystem, we can also stress at the
RBB workshop that attendees need not understand everything. Far from it.
Even you feel you're just copying and pasting at points, that is OK,
even expected. Quoting RailsGirls again: "Copy-pasting rules"!

Source: http://guides.railsgirls.com/guide/




On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 10:18 AM, Dan Pickett <dan.p...@gmail.com> wrote:

> from: Dan Pickett <dan.p...@gmail.com>
> date: Tue, Jul 22 10:18 AM -04:00 2014

> to: railsbridge-...@googlegroups.com
> subject: Re: Continue with 2 separate workshops? Or go back to a single one?
>

[Abby Howell]

I totally get that the RailsBridge philosophy is that copy-pasting rules. As former public schoolteacher, I've been trained to focus on outcomes and data in evaluating the effectiveness of my teaching. As a recent graduate of a programming bootcamp and a junior developer, I just think that telling people to copy-paste without understanding what they are doing is not effective pedagogy. From what I understand, the feedback from our students in the past RailsBridge summary reports seems to support that.

I think it's important to evaluate how effective our pedagogy is in introducing women to programming. Are we having a positive impact on the number of women entering the field? How many of our alumni have gone on to become developers? How many non-programmers left RailsBridge with a positive attitude toward programming? How many students with no background in programming felt that it was a good use of their time? How many went on to take another computer class? How many women with no background in programming took a RailsBridge workshop and later went on to become professional developers?

I worry that we might be doing more harm than good, taking enthusiastic and curious newcomers and giving them the impression that programming is complicated and not for them.

[Daniel Choi]

These are certainly important questions. It would be best to answer the
questions empirically, with comparative survey results.

Yes, in past survey results some people have reported feeling
overwhelmed by the one-workshop curriculum. But a clear majority
of respondents in post-workshop surveys also report that they plan on
continuing learning Ruby after the workshop. So it's not clear to me
that the one-workshop Rails curriculum is really discouraging people. We
need more data.

On Fri, Aug 01, 2014 at 03:38 PM, Abby Howell <abby.g...@gmail.com> wrote:

> from: Abby Howell <abby.g...@gmail.com>

> date: Fri, Aug 01 03:38 PM -04:00 2014
> to: Daniel Choi <dhc...@gmail.com>
> cc: Dan Pickett <dan.p...@gmail.com>, "railsbridge-...@googlegroups.com" <railsbridge-...@googlegroups.com>

[Jon Cheng]

At the end of the day, we're running a 1.5 day workshop. We can't teach students everything. I think the best we can shoot for is to instill in them a desire to continue learning Rails.

To that end, the metric that drives us should be if a RailsBridge student has continued to pursue some kind of web development learning months past their workshop date. If we see that, I'd consider that a victory. I don't think exit surveys are a strong indicator of these long term outcomes. We need to contact students further out.

[Dan Pickett]

Pedagogically, from my own research on the topic, the data and science shows that curriculum designed for adults around concrete learning objectives results in achieving those outcomes (For fellow pedagogical nerds, this book changed my professional life: http://www.amazon.com/The-Modern-Practice-Adult-Education/dp/0842822135). Knowles tells us that we should involve students in the formulation of those learning objectives, and to maintain their involvement as we work to meet them.

In order to make the 1.5 day workshop what we want, I think it’s important for the leadership as well as the community to establish those outcomes. There doesn’t seem to be a consensus, which seems to be causing some drift in our approach. 

To me, I’ve always thought the mission of the workshop was as Jon put it so well, "to instill in them a desire to continue learning Rails.” If it’s different from that, that’s ok, but I think it would help if we really clarified what our primary learning objectives are for the workshop. I don’t think we’ll be able to evaluate the success of the workshop until we all agree on what we’re setting out to accomplish.

Best,

Dan

[Daniel Choi]

I agree that it would be good to do more surveying, especially in a follow-up survey a few weeks after the workshop. Regardless of what the decision on the curriculum is, this should be something we can do for all previous workshop graduates. Should be appoint a volunteer team to draft a follow-up survey and send it out? 

[Daniel Choi]

How about we combine Jon and Dan Pickett's suggestions: 

1. Agree that the objective is something like:  "a desire to continue learning Ruby, Rails, or web application development generally".

2. Formulate a survey strategy to measure this outcome. Maybe there is more than one survey to be done per cohort: one at the end of the workshop and one a few months after.

3. Tweak the next workshop with the objective in mind.

4. Conduct the surveys and assess the results.

I think we should start with our traditional one-workshop Rails curriculum as the starting point.  We will try to meet the objective the best we can with that format and see the survey results, to see if they show that we really ought to change to the two-part workshop format that we will have to maintain alone apart from the rest of the worldwide Railsbridge community.

[Andrew Kuklewicz]

+1 to Dan's suggested synthesis

An approach I also wonder about is a starter workshop that teaches material leading up to the standard railsbridge workshop; rather than splitting the workshop, I wonder how many would come to a foundational / pre workshop to get them ready for it?

- Andrew

[Melissa Xie]

To fill everyone in, we had some great discussions around this topic at the last Boston Ruby Women, and here's what we've come up with:

We're going to keep having 2 separate workshops, but it'll mean the following:

1. We'll have to clean up the Ruby curriculum.

2. We're going to go back to using the curriculum that is being used by the broader RailsBridge community. This curriculum includes some Intro to Ruby bits, but we think this is ok because it would be great as a refresher for some of the students who might need it.

3. It'll all be self-paced. This worked out very well for the Ruby-only workshop last time, and it's something we should try for the Rails-only one as well.

Some other ideas that were discussed included:

* Giving pre-workshop "homework", e.g. reading, small tutorials, etc., so that the students would be less overwhelmed coming in.

* Setting up a chat room and/or mailing list (probably separate from this one) for anyone to ask questions prior to the workshop.

What are everyone's thoughts on all of this?

-- Melissa

[Janet Riley]

3. It'll all be self-paced. This worked out very well for the Ruby-only workshop last time, and it's something we should try for the Rails-only one as well.

It works well in the Boston Python workshop too.

 

Some other ideas that were discussed included:

* Giving pre-workshop "homework", e.g. reading, small tutorials, etc., so that the students would be less overwhelmed coming in.

I'd phrase it as "if it better fits your learning style, you can preview the materials at ____ or read this intro at ______".   Don't frame it as an assignment. 

Regards-

Janet 

[Janet Riley]

Are we going to do breakout sessions again?  If so, there'd probably be interest in "how to transition to a tech career".

Janet

 

[Daniel Choi]

Even though it's not what I argued for, I trust you guys and know you'll
do a great job with this. -- Dan

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 11:53 AM, Melissa Xie <m...@melissaxie.com> wrote:

> from: Melissa Xie <m...@melissaxie.com>
> date: Mon, Aug 11 11:53 AM -04:00 2014
> to: Dan Choi <dhc...@gmail.com>
> cc: "railsbridge-...@googlegroups.com" <railsbridge-...@googlegroups.com>, Abby Howell <abby.g...@gmail.com>

[Melissa Xie]

Holy crap - I just found out that I've been missing out on a HUGE chunk of discussion in this thread. I don't know what happened to all those emails, but I wish I had seen what everyone had said prior to having the discussion with the meetup group... There still would've been time to go back to just using the Rails curriculum and experimenting with surveys, etc., but I think it might be too late? The workshop is next week. =\

In my eyes, the workshops are just supposed to be a glimpse of what it might be like to program in Ruby and Rails. I don't think that we could ever prevent students from becoming overwhelmed, but as long as they felt moments of success and fun, I think we accomplished our goal.

There are increasingly more women who have taken a RailsBridge workshop and then getting into a bootcamp afterwards for a career change or at least getting involved with Boston Ruby Women, and I think that's awesome. Unfortunately, I don't have solid numbers, but I'd love to conduct those surveys as some of you mentioned. It'd be great if we could compile a list of questions for this. A while back, I had sent out this survey to the alumni group in hopes of figuring out how things worked out for previous attendees: http://bit.ly/17mfobd, but unfortunately, only 2 people responded.

And Janet - to answer your question about breakout sessions: yes, I think that is still the plan, much like the last Ruby workshop.

-- Melissa

On Tuesday, August 12, 2014 9:16:02 AM UTC-4, Daniel Choi wrote:

Even though it's not what I argued for, I trust you guys and know you'll
do a great job with this. -- Dan

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 11:53 AM, Melissa Xie <m...@melissaxie.com> wrote:

> from: Melissa Xie <m...@melissaxie.com>
> date: Mon, Aug 11 11:53 AM -04:00 2014
> to: Dan Choi <dhc...@gmail.com>

> cc: "railsbridge-boston-alumni@googlegroups.com" <railsbridge-boston-alumni@googlegroups.com>, Abby Howell <abby.g...@gmail.com>

>>> > cc: "railsbridge-boston-alumni@googlegroups.com" <
>>> railsbridge-boston-alumni@googlegroups.com>

>>> >> email to railsbridge-boston-alumni+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

>>> >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>> >>
>>> >
>>> > --
>>> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
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