2013-10-05
2013-10-02: This week in class we're focusing more on getting together in new groups, working out how to collaborate with each other, and learning new tools as we work. Yesterday in class, we were assigned based on our questionnaire and learning style / group role, a role as curator, producer, entrepreneur and presenter. We were also told that we would form new vertical groups in our next assignment, which at first while hesitant, I think is an important skill to keep working on. With Google Calendar going, and our first assignment, I'm glad that the class is becoming more structured and organized. The github Questionnaire repository contains helpful information and clearer instructions on what is expected of us. So far, I've tried to start the discussion with both my vertical and horizontal group so we can get in contact with each other and start the commmunication early on instead of later. Some of us are already talking with each other on how we can get the assignment done, how we're going to learn Python in conjunction with our knowledge of R, and what some of the best methods will be for accomplishing our task. I think that as everyone in our two groups starts communicating more, and the flow of conversation increases, we'll really get more productivity as everyone has something to contribute and will help provide a unique perspective. I hope that this one week will be enough for all of us to tackle this assignment, but I'm hopeful. It was also great that both Kristina and Aaron were so responsive regarding some issues that our horizontal group had run into, which was one student not being enrolled in the class. This then led to conversations on how to improve the dialogue within our group, and suggestions on how to keep the conversation going and speaking in OH with regards to other suggestions that the instructors had. I think this one assignment is really indicative of how collaboration works, and as we get further into the assignment, we'll learn first-hand about reproducibility of our work since that is another goal.
2013-10-05: Thursday was a productive day.
- Met with Aaron for OH in the morning: https://github.com/j-zhang/notes/blob/master/2013-10-03_OH.md
- Professor Stark continued his discussion on earthquake predictions: https://github.com/j-zhang/notes/blob/master/2013-10-03_stark.md
- Met with our group-5 to discuss the assignment further and took notes on the process we were undergoing: https://github.com/j-zhang/group-5/blob/master/2013-10-03.md
Overall, I think our group is working efficiently, and we value each other's schedules. We finished the curator stage by Thursday evening, and analyzer stage by Friday afternoon. Over the weekend we're working on the visualization and presenter step, and meeting with Aaron for OH. It's good that we're finally using GitHub more in a collaborative fashion, and the issue tracker is similar to other tools we use in classes such as Piazza. Based on the comments from the issue tracker, the class is definitely focused more on reproducibility and collaboration than anything else. I think having this stressed is helpful for when we work together. I've also noticed a spike in the emails we've been getting this week, and their content.
While it's great that we're getting a lot more info, we're also being inundated with information. In one week, we're expected to learn how to use and code in Python, and read all the research papers. However, one thing I thought about was, if we are trying to focus on the process, learning simply to code in Python in one week, is like barrelling through the process. At a university, students expect to get guidance, and while learning on our own and pushing ourselves is definitely a reasonable expectation, it would be very helpful to get at least a demonstration or tutorial on the Notebook and the language, instead of having an excessive number of outside resources that we are expected to go to. Furthermore, it's not feasible to compensate for our time lost by spending 72 two hours in one week dedicated to learning the language when we have other courses to commit to as well.
2013-10-06: Yesterday, our group also went to OH from 4 - 7:30 pm. The first hour felt more overwhelming than anything, since the previous group had been there for 3 hours, and seemed like they had gained a lot out of their discussion. After the first hour, I felt like there wasn't enough time to get all the same learning they had, and felt behind. Our group then talked about our game plan, and realized we had an idea of what else we needed to tackle. When we realized that we still weren't sure how to make the CSV file part reproducible, we went back to OH to learn about the Google Spreadsheet API and running through the example on iPython Notebook. We also weren't fully sure what the git push was, since we had been working through the User Interface. After another session of OH, running through the steps and diagramming out the VM, running through the example, I felt much more comfortable with where I was at in the course. We also had a better understanding of using git, and what it actually meant to clone to desktop and push back onto GitHub. Today, we're running through our presentation and figuring out what we want to present in the 3 minutes. I think the OH have been extremely helpful, and it's incredible that Aaron dedicates his entire weekend to this class. He's been very patient in working with all the groups that have come in to OH.