Kickstart 2023 wrap-up and thoughts for the future
Our kickstart course came and went with very few problems. This post summarizes our general thoughts on the course and its format.
If you want to join the course next year (as an attendee, or as an organization who will send your learners to us (and maybe co-teach) follow us on Mastodon. This is the third year we’ve done the livestream format, and it’s not likely to stop anytime soon.
This was originally written in June 2023 but publication was forgotten until 2024.
History of the course
The course has run since around 2015 or so. Until mid 2020, it was always in-person only. Until (and including) 2022, it ran twice a year, January and June, but now it runs only in June (increased availability of videos + the material compensates). It runs in June so that it aligns with new summer research interns starting. Until around 2020, it was mostly about using the HPC cluster at Aalto University, but since then there has been more emphasis on day 1 covering generic skills needed for scientific computing and the big picture of things.
General feedback
Our general feedback remains quite positive. Our streaming + coteaching + collaborative notes format is still well received, and there seems to be little reason to go back for courses of smaller scale. Instead of just lectures, written material (tutorials in info on scicomp.aalto.fi) + livestream + videos is a good combination.
Not enough time
There is never enough time - not much else to say. Each year there is a different trade-off between how much we cover and how brief we are. (There are always people who say we should go more in-depth, and some who say we go too much in-depth. Such is life.)
Reduce repetition
Repetition is good, but not when it’s a sign that we can’t stop talking and keep saying the same thing over and over. The best lessons seemed to be the ones that were taught most quickly, since it has a high density of new information. We should strive to make more lessons faster, and leave details to the reading.
Integrated support and teaching
Because the teachers also do support, for anything difficult, we can easily tell learners: “Do what you can, come by our SciComp garage to ask for help with anything else. This overall reduces the demands from teaching: a person doesn’t have to know everything, but know enough to get started and to know when they may need more help for more advanced tools. This really is good for both of us.
Linux shell and other prerequisites
As usual, we expected our learners to read our shell crash course in advance. We also had a new tutorial on using the cluster from the shell. This helped some, but it was still a problem.
Reflection: this will always be a problem in any course that has a wide enough audience. We should accept and provide positive support for those not ready, and not try to exclude them. It’s OK to see a course and then strive to get the prerequisites later.
Should the course be divided into two?
Internally, we had this thought of dividing the course in two: a basic part at the start of the summer, and an advanced part at the end of the summer - since brand new researchers may have trouble understanding everything. On the other hand, the fact we have videos means that people can come back and review the material when they are ready. So in some sense, learners can divide the course however they would like by stopping when they think it’s no longer necessary and coming back. This could be mentioned more explicitly in our introductions.
Attendance
Attendance goes down day-by-day. This is definitely OK - it doesn’t hurt anyone. It’s expected that day 1 was suitable for the most people (even those not doing HPC work), and then the course topics got continually more specific as we went further and further.
As mentioned above, this is even be expected and encouraged - better to have someone attend day 1, than not.
Exercise level
Our exercises are quite basic overall, but we got few complains about this. Basic exercises are better than something too advanced or realistic, that requires many things to come together.
This year, we tried to have a complete solution for every exercise (script and/or commands), even if it’s directly said above in the lesson. This seemed to be good, since for people very short of time, they still have some chance to copy and paste and do the exercises. For those passively following, they can at least see what would have been done.
Other feedback from the notes
Day 3 / end of course feedback positive feedback (o is the way a
person votes for/agrees with that option:
it’s great that the material is so easily accessible also after the course to go through things in my own pace again oo
Really good format with the streaming and the shared document for questions. ooooo
The cat kept me focused in the lecture
Live interaction with the instructes were very helpful and exercises were nice
I really appreaciate the instructors took the time to explain the jargons, instead of just letting them fly around. o
The fact that the instructors were really nice contributed to the good course experience. Thanks for that! o
(day 1) After studying remotely for 1,5 year and having lots of online classes, I highly appreciate the amazing audio quality here. Many thanks for that!
(day 1) The framework is better than any other workshop I’ve ever attended - in terms of interaction and audio quality. HackMD is great.
(day 1) The (twitch) vertical screen thing is genius and should be used in way more (online) lectures o
Most common negative feedback: not enough time! In fact, that’s almost only thing to improve. Except we can’t, so I think we win pretty well. And videos/material allows follow-up.