Learning Resource Review: Coding

Hello! Thank you for sharing such an awesome learning resource with us, I am excited to jump into it! I know absolutely nothing about coding or computers so I am interested in learning what this project has to teach. So here we go!

Right off the bat there’s an awesome outside resource, Jupyter, being used! It’s great to give your learners access to such accessible programs! I liked the integration – it made it easier for me to know what I was doing and what worked and what didn’t. It’s good that the learners get a chance to code and manipulate the code themselves and see the affects. However, I did find it a bit confusing at the beginning as the outline for the project is still at the top, that might need to be taken out before the final draft. Back to Jupyter – I think that it would be really great to include screen captures of where the menus are or even a screen recording uploaded chunk by chunk to the resource! I think by including that it might cut down on some frustration users have if they can’t find the right application and function – there are just so many to choose from! (Or I might just suck at using computers)

In the beginning of the of the resource you clearly outline what learners will be able to do after completing the resource which allows the learners will be able to know what to focus on throughout the resource. Along with that the learning outcomes are laid out and broken down into understandable chunks – I know nothing about code and I understood it! However, I’m not 100% clear on when I am supposed to be using Jupyter or creating my own code. Perhaps the interactive parts of the learning resource that are located at the end could be moved to the corresponding explanation above? I think it would be nice to have them to follow the explanations of what each coding thing is; by doing this it would help the learner encode and consolidate the information they just took in! Along with this you could include a mini coding quiz or something of the like at the end to see if the learners have consolidated the information enough to use retrieval?

It is also mentioned that there are great videos on YouTube and Matplotlib; to add to the accessibility I think it would be beneficial to embed some of the videos that you think are into your resource so that the learner doesn’t have to search too much to find them. I might have missed it but it would be nice if there was references in the text of the resource so I would know where to go for more information if it didn’t make sense – by doing this you can stop further confusion for your learners!

I think you did an amazing job of linking assessments to each learning outcome in the beginning and throughout the resource it was very clear what I was supposed to be learning and how I should be doing each activity – I just didn’t know when I was supposed to be using Jupyter although, that might be because I don’t know anything about coding. I liked the interactive use of Jupyter, perhaps you might consider also facilitating a discussion around what coding the learners are doing – maybe through a blog post of some sort. The blog post could be used for the learners to ask questions of you and possibly help each other; by helping each other and chatting about coding it could also increase the amount the learners retain!

Thank you so much for your learning resource! I found it quite interesting and very well written! I think I will try and figure out how to use Jupyter myself – I could use another hobby.. and it wouldn’t hurt me to learn more about computers!

Bye for now!