Wrapping Up the STScI Course

The online portion of our work with learners at the Space Telescope Science Institute wound up today. 6 of the 14 people who took part in the on-site workshop submitted "graduation exercise" videos, and three more sent apologies (time pressure, technical difficulties, etc.), which I think is a pretty good completion rate. As always, we finished up by asking everyone to give us one good and one bad thing about the class:

Some of the apparent contradictions in the "Bad" column reflect the diversity of learners' backgrounds; once again, I think this was the biggest challenge we faced. Overall, though, it was an interesting contrast to my experience running a class through P2PU. I've taught the content of Software Carpentry dozens of times over 14 years, so I had something immediate to draw on for the folks at STScI. On the other hand, I've never completed a course online myself, so I didn't have relevant personal experience to bring to bear at P2PU. I hope that by engaging local helpers in future bootcamp follow-ups, we'll help to grow a pool of people who can do that kind of teaching better.