[p2pu-webcraft] Challenges Feedback

Allen Gunn gunner at aspirationtech.org
Wed Aug 31 06:34:22 UTC 2011


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Hey friends,

Super enjoying this thread, Laura thanks for kicking this off. And great
to job to all the folks that are fleshing these critters out, really
cool to see substantial stuff there :^)

I'll second Laura's statement about not being uber familiar with P2PU
norms, but in addition to great comments already made:

* I think the size of the different challenges varies a good bit on
first look. Challenge 1 seems like at least 2 challenges to me (get set
up, do Hello World), and other challenges may be of arbitrarily large
size. Apologies if I've missed this in earlier threads, but what order
of magnitude of time is anticipated to be required per challenge?

* Part of why I ask is IMO learning should always start with an easy
win/near-term outcome, and Challenge 1 is a bigger thing. It's substantial.

* My personal opinion is the sequential learning units should always
hold together well as a story. e.g.

1) First you'll get your environment set up to do some webmaking
2) Then you'll do the simplest of webmaking tasks, "Hello world"
3) Next you'll...

While it's arguably pedestrian to explicitly say all this, I think it's
the kind of stuff that a) makes the material more accessible at first
glance, and b) gives learners initial scaffolding to hang their
discoveries on.

I also think such articulations can benefit the challenge-to-challenge
continuity, though I realize modularity is a goal.

* By extension, I think the most engaging materials are those that
clearly convey their benefit to the user/learner. Each overview section
might have explicit "after this challenge" language (aka "The Payoff" or
"Victory") that describes skill and knowledge gain in non-technical
terms, "you will be able to " e.g. "build simple web pages", "add design
features to an existing page", "integrate video into a page', "add
interactivity to a page"...

* John and Philipp will be shocked to hear me say this, but I think we
should be getting uninitiated target users looking at these now, not
after they've been polished/finished. More P2P-based feedback before
format/structure/template decisions get cemented!

OK those are my late night thoughts, looking forward to the next round!

thanks & peace,
gunner


On 08/30/2011 10:06 AM, Philipp Schmidt wrote:
> I believe the challenges still live at webmaking101.p2pu.org
> <http://webmaking101.p2pu.org> at the moment. Can't be edited by others. 
> 
> P
> 
> On 30 August 2011 12:57, Alison Cole <alison at p2pu.org
> <mailto:alison at p2pu.org>> wrote:
> 
>     If Laura joins the course as a participant she can edit all tasks
>     that Jamie has marked collaborative/editable.
> 
> 
>     On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 5:57 AM, Laura Hilliger
>     <laura at zythepsary.com <mailto:laura at zythepsary.com>> wrote:
> 
>         Hi everyone,
> 
>         Just wanted to give some feedback on the challenges. First off,
>         I applaud all those involved. You guys rock. 
> 
>         I'd like to give some feedback on http://webmaking101.p2pu.org/
>         as a whole, from the perspective of someone not involved. I get
>         that it's a pilot program, I have no idea what your timeline is
>         and I don't know what all you're already discussing. I'm also
>         aware that it's a draft. If my feedback is irrelevant than
>         please forgive me for wasting your time! That said, I have
>         perused a bunch of your documentation.
> 
>         1. On the Introduction page - text says "The only assumption
>         made is that the learner can use the web..." Really, what does
>         this mean "use the web"? I'm a little confused on the target
>         audience. Through the documentation that I find on Webmaking
>         101, the target audience is very loosely defined. In fact, the
>         definition I find for SoW is "general audience" and "targeted
>         niche audience" (learning web development from the ground up and
>         niche topics for developers). Can you be more specific about the
>         target audience? Who are you targeting, twenty-somethings that
>         don't write HTML yet? There's a difference between people who
>         use the web for email, facebook and amazon and people who know
>         how to USE the web. 
> 
>         The reason i point this out is because there are basics to web
>         usage that aren't approached on SoW and I wonder if there should
>         be a WebUsage 101course with challenges that approach those
>         basics. For example, collaborative document editing - something
>         we all do, but is MAGIC to people who aren't web "users". You'd
>         be surprised how many people out there don't actually know that
>         they can share documents without attaching a .doc to an email.
>         Or searching, lots of people don't actually know how to find
>         things on the web, believe it or not. Or online photos...This is
>         digital divide stuff, I guess, but I always thought that SoW
>         should think about approaching these basics, but I don't know if
>         that was ever in discussion.
> 
>         These are much bigger questions that apply to a lot of projects
>         out there, just something to think about. 
> 
>         2. "The challenges are designed to be followed in a serial
>         manner..." How will you integrate the challenges to
>         corresponding courses? I'm curious as to how this will be
>         implemented in SoW and wonder if anyone wants to tell us about
>         that. Where are the challenges going to be accessible? What does
>         one have to complete to start doing the challenges? Are the
>         challenges only attached to the Webmaking 101 course, or will
>         they be accessible through the CSS or HTML5 courses as well? 
> 
>         3. There are a lot, a lot of typos. I'd be happy to do some
>         editing if you point me to an editable document.
> 
>         4. On the 2nd challenge, 1st task - "12 Rules for Choosing the
>         Right Domain" is directed at users in the USA. European users
>         have a very different take on some of these points. Just an FYI.
>         3rd Task - give recommendations for FLOSS editors! 
> 
>         5. Is this how the challenges are to be ordered? If so, you
>         might want to get people visualizing their pages BEFORE they
>         start programming, or is the intention that they learn through
>         programming the earlier challenges and then redo the challenges
>         when creating their site?
> 
>         6. What about image editing, webfonts and open licensed content? 
> 
>         Ok, that's enough for now. Don't know if any of it is useful,
>         but those are the thoughts that were on the top of my head. 
> 
>         Cheers!
>         Laura
> 
>          
>         Laura F. Hilliger
>         laura at zythepsary.com <mailto:laura at zythepsary.com> 
>         www.zythepsary.com <http://www.zythepsary.com/> 
>         @epilepticrabbit <http://twitter.com/#%21/epilepticrabbit>
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> 
> 
>     -- 
> 
>     Alison
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> 
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Allen Gunn
Executive Director, Aspiration
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www.aspirationtech.org

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