We've come to the end of a hot, slightly sweaty, two days of learning in UCL and have just done a straw poll of participants of the good and bad points of this bootcamp. Something that was trialled at UCL was asking participants to sign up in small (3-4 people) teams drawn from their local research group. In total, we had a little over 40 learners and 10 helpers. We also taught the version control portion using EasyMercurial (thanks to Chris Cannam from SoundSoftware).
Here's what we learned...
Good
Beginner friendly
Easy learning curve
Now know how to use SQL
Doesn't matter what programming language I used in the first place
Version control for the win
Taught functional programming rather than object-oriented
Material backed up by anecdotes and evidence
Good at giving thoughts rather than skills
Can go back and share with other members of the group
Killed my fear of version control
Give tips on good programming practices
Anything new was given with the why as well as the what
Introduction to systematic testing
Best balance of typing, testing and listening
Good ratio of helpers to students
Greg's digressions keep your mind active
Learned feedback technique of using coloured sticky notes
Test driven development
Quoted Alan Turing (programs are just a type of data)
Working in pairs
Live coding (realtime typing)
Being forced to use python
Psychological aspects, and how it relates to programming
Always good to reinforce the learning of things you've heard before
Interaction with participants at workshops — both in workshop and in pub
Website is a good resource
Insight (for a sysadmin) of how the researchers I support work
Bad
Can't afford to buy all the books referenced
Too early a start [9am start both days in central London]
Too much to take in
Not enough functional programming
Lower level than group is used to
Need coffee at the start of the morning [which we didn't have on day 2]
Problems with the wireless network
Need biscuits in the afternoon
No handouts [though SWC does this because best practice suggests you shouldn't give out handouts at the start]
Lack of air conditioning
Too short (not enough days) [SWC experience shows that 5 days F2F didn't work, will have online followups]
Not clear when you should be furiously catching up on typing
Greg's too fast
Helpers not physically interspersed amongst tutors
Room too small
Not enough desks / table arrangements
Couldn't find nose on list of required software
No documentation on how to get nose running on a windows system
No toilets / running water on the same floor [we broke the toilets and the lift!]
Microphone would have been good
Recommending Cygwin rather than VMware or Virtualbox [but people want to come out with a working setup...]
Implied endorsement of bittorrent for illegal activities (plus smartass comments)
What does this tell us? Probably that the teaching environment has a much bigger impact than you might expect, and that we should do all we can to fix it upstream. Also that Greg talks and types too fast!
We're going to have plenty of chances to see how these good and bad points change as we go on to the next workshops — collecting the evidence so that we can understand how to teach people better.
Originally posted 2012-05-02 by Neil Chue Hong in Assessment, University College London.