Suggestions for Quality Control section of "Basic Quality Assurance and Control, and Data Manipulation in Spreadsheets"

[sararasmussn]

For the episode "Basic Quality Assurance and Control, and Data Manipulation in Spreadsheets", I would suggest these edits to the Quality Control section:

• The tip about version control and the readme paragraph below are related, but it's not clear whether these are theoretical concepts to be explained to learners, or whether they are part of the hands-on process.
• If time allows, I would suggest incorporating hands-on steps because then learners have practice with the idea presented. At the very least, an example in the narrative would help illustrate each of these steps, maybe broken into a numbered list because while brief, these paragraphs pack a lot of information.
• Stylistically, I would suggest making these the same text format; one as a tip and one as a free-floating paragraph is a little disjointed.

Thank you for your consideration!

[morskyjezek]

Hi @sararasmussn - thanks for these observations and suggestions! We're always happy to get this sort of feedback and input on the Library Carpentry materials. You make a good point, and in looking over this section of the lesson, I agree that the "Tip!" and advice about readme are not well integrated into the flow of the lesson. The placement in the flow of the lesson A related point was raised about the conflicting advice throughout the lesson about logging actions (#36 ) which in some points is described as a step in a new sheet, and is also mentioned as a separate file. In any case, I see this point as related to the larger issue. For the moment, we haven't been able to address this comment, but I think that we hope to in the near future, so leaving this issue open as a reminder.

I like your suggestion of a hands-on step or example. An activity (eg, save a copy of the file and make your changes there; create a readme file) may be complicated, as it could add time to the lesson, and also I think it would also make more sense for an activity like that to occur in the first or second episodes rather than at this later stage in the lesson.