Round 3: Mastery

In this round, we’re going to try to reach consensus on what “mastery” of the Software Carpentry material actually means. We’ll do this by synthesizing a handful of questions that sum up what our learners actually want to learn, then figure out what their answers are as novices, as competent practitioners, and as experts.

Step 1: please read the following:

• Chapter 4 of How Learning Works;
• the competence matrix essay on the Software Carpentry site; and
• the Systematic Curriculum Design post on the same site.

Step 2: working on your own, come up with 6-12 questions that summarize what we’re trying to help our learners do. My eight are:

1. How can I manage this data?
2. How can I process it?
3. How can I tell if I’ve processed it correctly?
4. How can I find and fix bugs when I haven’t?
5. How can I keep track of what I’ve done?
6. How can I find and use other people’s work?
7. How can other people find and use mine?
8. How can I do all these things faster?

but I’m not satisfied with them (as you can probably guess from how poorly they and the core content map onto each other, as summarized in the curriculum design blog post). In order to make your intentions clear, please explain what you expect a complete beginner, a competent intermediate, and an expert to do in answer to each question. For example:

1. How can I keep track of what I’ve done?
   • Novice: keep a written lab notebook.
   • Intermediate: save output of “history” command to a shell script.
   • Expert: have all tools record parameters and version numbers in all output files.

Please post your questions on the blog by Thursday, September 27.

Step 3: working in small groups, consolidate your individual ideas to produce one list per group. Please post your consolidated question lists by Thursday, October 4. Groups are:

Group 1 (Neon Carrot): Carlos Anderson, Erik Bray, Ben Waugh

Group 2 (Wild Watermelon): Justin Ely, Emily Jane McTavish, Sarah Supp

Group 3 (Atomic Tangerine): Katy Huff, Justin Kitzes, Lynne Williams

Group 4 (Electric Lime): Aron Ahmadia, Azalee Bostroem, Becky Stewart