Create an outline.md with an overview of the lessons in this repo, which to include in a standard SWC workshop, and in what order

[naupaka]

There is a ton of great content in this repo. Perhaps a great place to start getting it organized would be an outline.md document that lists the repos, and proposes an order and a core set. Then we can focus on getting these core modules polished and move some of the others in to supplementary or additional materials sections? As discussed in the comments on #10

[sritchie73]

Ive had a few interested people contact me about the mozsprint. Would it be helpful for a few of us to iterate over an outline beforehand? I suspect large structural changes might be a bit overwhelming for an individual to tackle.

[hdashnow]

Great idea. It would be good to get all the structural changes out of the way before the sprint starts. Let me know what I can do to help (presumably comment!).

On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 2:09 PM, Scott Ritchie notifications@github.com wrote:

Ive had a few interested people contact me about the mozsprint. Would it be helpful for a few of us to iterate over an outline beforehand? I suspect large structural changes might be a bit overwhelming for an individual to tackle.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/swcarpentry/r-novice-gapminder/issues/12#issuecomment-106165108 .

Harriet Dashnow BSc, BA, MSc (Bioinformatics), PhD candidate au.linkedin.com/in/hdashnow

[naupaka]

+1

[gvwilson]

+100 -- sprints are good for filling in bits and pieces, but very frustrating for newcomers if the ground is shifting under their feet.
If you can rearrange the pieces and file lots of one-line tickets describing what you want added or fixed, that will give them something concrete to do and help them avoid tripping over each other. (Best thing if you have time: file a one-line ticket, then put FIXME #123: description description description in the doc itself where you want the change - the ticket allows the newcomer to claim something, so you don't get duplication and frustration, and embedded markers in text are easier to write and understand.)

[aammd]

I volunteer to write the rough draft! fear not, it will be terrible, lots of room for comments.

[aammd]

@gvwilson would you mind spelling out this FIXME business a little bit more? or perhaps link to a commit where it was successfully done?

[mikabr]

Discussing (from mozzsprint) streamlining the lessons: take my thoughts with a grain of salt, because I’ve never actually run R tutorials, but my intuition is that the most important things to learn are dplyr, tidyr, and ggplot, and the sooner you get to them the better. A lot of the more basic things, like data types, data structures, subsetting, etc, are things you need to know to understand R, but may not need / care about right away if you’re trying to do data analysis.

[hdashnow]

Oddly enough, I actually don't have a strong opinion about this. I grew up on base R, so I don't use most of these tools. But from what I've heard, they are great for beginners. I'm all for giving the students a positive first R experience that makes them want to try it out on their own data. So, I think I agree?

[sritchie73]

+1 to @mikabr 's thoughts also.

[aammd]

• 100 to this. the Data Structure stuff is much better when people are already accomplishing cool things. rather than right at the start.

[naupaka]

I might move this type of content into the instructors.md file instead of a separate outline.md file, just keep things consolidated.

[tomwright01]

I also learned R before the advent of tools such as ggplot and plyr. I'm not keen on emphasising dplyr ggplot etc over the basics such as data types. In my opinion the aim of SWC is to teach good programming, not data analysis. While ggplot etc are great tools I feel an understanding of datatyping leads to better code.

I agree excitement and achievement are important motivational factors, while I haven't taught R since PR #89 (I think that's the correct PR), I have great hopes that the new structure of lesson topic 4 (data structures) will enhance the relevance and applicability of this topic.

[naupaka]

Closing this since it will be handled by upcoming changes to instructor.md files.