Anonymous user
Community Data Science Workshops (Spring 2014)/Reflections: Difference between revisions
Community Data Science Workshops (Spring 2014)/Reflections (view source)
Revision as of 22:12, 15 March 2015
, 9 years agomoved to wiki.communitydata.cc
imported>Mako |
imported>Jtmorgan m (moved to wiki.communitydata.cc) |
||
(14 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{CDSW Moved}}
Over three weekends in Spring 2014, a group of volunteers organized the [[Community Data Science Workshops]] (CDSW) — a series of four sessions designed to introduce some of the basic tools of programming and analysis of data from online communities to absolute beginners. The CDSW were held between April 4th and May 31st in 2014 at the University of Washington in Seattle. ▼
▲Over three weekends in Spring 2014, a group of volunteers organized the [[Community Data Science Workshops (Spring 2014)]] (CDSW) —
This page hosts reflections on organization and curriculum and is written for anybody interested in organizing their own CDSW — including the authors!
In general, the mentors and students
If you have any questions or issues, you can contact [[Benjamin Mako Hill]] directly or can email the whole group of mentors at cdsw-sp2014-mentors@uw.edu.
== Structure ==
The [[
* '''Session 0 (Friday April 4th)''': [[
* '''Session 1 (Saturday April 5th)''': [[
* '''Session 2 (Saturday May 3rd)''': [[
* '''Session 3 (Saturday May 31st)''': [[
Our organization and the curriculum for Sessions 0 and 1 were borrowed from the [http://bostonpythonworkshop.com/ Boston Python Workshop] (BPW): Session 0 was a three hour evening session to install software. The other sessions were all day-long session (10am to 4pm) sessions broken up into the following schedule:
Line 56 ⟶ 60:
=== Projects ===
In the afternoons, we
In Sessions 1 and 2, the self-directed projects were based on working through examples from [http://www.codecademy.com/ Code Academy] that we had put from material already online on the website. In the self-directed track, students could work at their own pace with mentors on hand to work with them when they became stuck.
Line 65 ⟶ 69:
* All of the libraries necessary to run the examples (e.g., [http://www.tweepy.org/ Tweepy] for the Session 2 Twitter track).
* All of the data necessary to run the example programs (e.g., a full English word list for the Wordplay
* Any other necessary code or libraries we had written for the example.
* A series of small numbered example programs (~5-10 examples). Each example program attempts to be sparse, well documented, and not more than 10-15 lines of Python code. Each program tried both to do something concrete but also provide an example for learners to modify. Althought it was not always
On average, the non-self-directed afternoon tracks constituted of about 30% impromptu lecture where a designated lead mentor would walk through one or more of the examples explaining the code and concepts in detail and answerinig questions.
Learners would work on these challenges at their own pace working with mentors for help. If the group was stuck on a concept or tool, the lead mentor would bring the group back together to walk through the concept using the project in the full group.
Line 81 ⟶ 85:
== Session 0: Python Setup ==
The goal of this session was to get users setup with Python and starting to learn some of the basics. The setup curriculum was adpated from BPW. We ran into the following challanges:
* Users on Windows struggled to get Python setup and added to their path.
Line 99 ⟶ 103:
== Session 1: Introduction to Python ==
The goal of this session was to teach the basic of programming in Python. The curriculum for BPW has been used many times and is well tested. Unsurprisingly, it worked well for us as well.
That said, there several things we will change when we teach the material again:
Line 115 ⟶ 119:
== Session 2: Learning APIs ==
The goal of this session was to describe what web APIs were, how they worked (making HTTP requests and receiving data back), how to understand JSON Data, and how to use common web APIs from Wikipedia and Twitter.
Mentors and students felt that this session was the most successful and effective session.
Line 143 ⟶ 149:
== Session 3: Data Analysis and Visualization ==
The goal of this session was to get users to the point where they could take data from a web API and ask and answer basic data science questions by using Python to manipulating data and by creating simple visualizations.
Our philosophy in Session 3 was to teach users to get data into tools they already know and use. We thought this would be a better use of their time and help make users independent earlier.
Line 192 ⟶ 200:
=== Budget ===
For lunch we spent between $400 (pizza), $360 (a few less
Most mentors could not make the follow-up sessions so we spent about $100 per session on mentor dinners. If more people showed up, it would have been closer to $200-250 per mentor dinner.
All of our food was generously supported by the [http://escience.washington.edu/ eScience Institute at UW]. The rooms were free because they were provided by [http://www.com.washington.edu UW Department of Communication]
If you had a total budget would be in the order of $2000-2500, I think you could easily do a similar 3.5 day-long
<!-- LocalWords: CDSW BPW JSON
|