Bootcamp adventures

[blahah]

A sprint project, in which I turn https://github.com/Blahah/command_line_bootcamp into a modular system for browser-based teaching of any command-line-based materials (e.g. bioinformatics stuff, data science, devops, server management, etc...).

This is my initial rough plan...

Seed ideas:

• Make it easy for people to deploy this system with their own materials and docker image - perhaps a generator, or pre-built configurable images for cloud providers.
• Make a version for the classroom, features like:
  • system runs on a local machine and serves to the local network
  • the teacher gets an interface that allows them to demo on screen, but also see how each student is progressing
• Q&A - test questions can be set for each module and the user can't progress until they answer the questions correctly
• Environment syncs with module - when the user navigates to a particular module, the command-line environment gets set up for that module
• Reset environment - if the user makes a mess and wants to restore a clean environment, let them do that easily

  Process:

research > design > implementation > user testing

Research

• Reach out to people who do computational teaching
• Ask for reviews of existing bootcamp example
• Discuss how they would want to use it
• Maybe design a survey to solicit initial feedback and then seek more detailed discussion

  Design

• Persona exercise
• Route mapping exercise

[joeyklee]

Very cool - I think would be great is maybe some demo materials + a video to explain why and how command line knowledge is an important skill. Also, as we saw in the P5.js "hello" video - it is welcoming for users that might not immediately understand how cool it actually is to be able to automagically change 10000 file names using the command line, etc.

[blahah]

Ooh that's a nice idea! Like a showcase of what cool stuff you can do from the command-line. I'm now wondering if there could be a clihub or someting, a site where you can pick any community-provided tutorial for learning something at the command line, and launch it in your browser...

[joeyklee]

Yes! It would be great to use the "remix" idea like the Mozilla Thimble or to have like a roadmap of commandline adventures

[blahah]

Planning a small, painless survey to collect community feedback about which features are useful or which frustrations they feel with current tools: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/commandlinetut. Thanks to @stephwright for dropping science on me about how to make awesome surveys.

[stephwright]

Was thinking abt the idea of having some small group review your survey for usability / readability and realized you have a built-in group here that would a) be likely to respond, b) respond quickly, and c) wouldn't draw from your pool of likely survey respondents. :)

[blahah]

Excellent point!