This week was the CCBB's first ever Big Data in Biology summer school. I was the Python instructor. 4x3-hour-days, 16 students. Fun.
What worked:
- Topics: I think we had a good covering of what really matters in programming
- Red/Green stickies: Red sticky on laptop = trouble, green = all good. Really efficient.
- Bite-sized materials. I largely did one markdown document per topic (one on Pandas importing and slicing, one on missing data filtration and replacement, one on plotting). Helped keep me on track, ensure exercise breaks and keep the schedule moving.
- Integrating testing: I think by-and-large, most people were comfortable with the logic of self-skepticism by the end of the course, even if we didn't get to actual formal testing.
- Class size: We never had so many people to help that two of us couldn't manage efficiently.
What didn't:
- Installs: I know other instructors don't support Windows, and it's tempting to just give up. I do feel like GitBash is a big help on this front, but working at the interpreter in iPython was persistently a problem.
- Trying to go off-script: I should really know by now that if I go off-script and something doesn't work out, I will get mad flustered. But I don't know this. And I try it all the time.
Neutral:
- Git: Still kind of much for novices. Since this was a Python course, we more-or-less used it to disseminate materials. I'm not sure I would do try this way of managing materials again without a full session on Git. But ... multiple people had started their own repos for personal scripts and were pushing to them by the end of the workshop. So unclear.
- The room: It was nice, I think the temperature was generally nice, and it had appropriate hook-ups for my computer. Screen mirroring had a slick set-up, too. But power strips were an issue.
- The schedule: There was some pretty obvious fatigue, particularly among students who were taking morning classes by the end. Not sure how to manage this, because I do think all the stuff we went over was important. I saved regex for the last day, since those are easy to visually understand via RegexPal.
Overall, I had a good time. We'll see in a couple weeks what the students thought.