Novapython's first Djentle Django workshop has been a great success. Thanks
goes out to NVCC for providing the space and equipment. Also thanks to
Willow Tree Apps for providing two days of lunch for everyone. Also, we
should mention all the teachers and helpers that made this possible:
Now that we've competed this class, it's a good time to time to look over what
worked, what didn't, what to add/remove, and just think about stuff in general.
What better way than to go through the questions I sent out to all the attendees
Preworkshop Results
This is what we were hoping for! Now, if everyone had completed the survey, then
the results would have been a little different, but not by much. We had some
true beginners, but nobody had the fear. The opended questions are a little
harder to quantify, but the majority of attendees were worried about being
left behind. After going through the postworkshop results, I feel we did a
great job in alleviating this worry.
Also, an informal survey of the class showed a lot of programming experience in
other languages and frameworks. Java was prevelant. I had a lot of side
questions about Flask and Pyramid as well. A good bit of the class had database
experience (odd, if you ask me. I would have thought more HTML than databases).
Postworkshop
We received only 4 responses for the postworkshop, which tells me we need a
better way of gathering the results. But anyway, the questions:
- What is your current comfort level with HTML/CSS? (Very Comfortable / Comfortable / No Opinion / Not So Comfortable)
- 2 Very Comfortable
- 2 Comfortable
- 0 No Opinion
- 0 Not So Comfortable
- What is your current comfort level with Python? (Very Comfortable / Comfortable / No Opinion / Not So Comfortable)
- 1 Very Comfortable
- 2 Comfortable
- 0 No Opinion
- 1 Not So Comfortable
- What is your current comfort level with Django? (Very Comfortable / Comfortable / No Opinion / Not So Comfortable)
- 0 Very Comfortable
- 3 Comfortable
- 1 No Opinion
- 0 Not So Comfortable
- What topics would you have liked to learn more about? (Open Ended)
- What was the least helpful part of this course? (Open Ended)
- Does anything particularly interesting stand out in your memory? (Open Ended)
- Would you be interested in a followup course? (Boolean)
- Had you ever used Linux before this course? (Boolean)
- Did you feel rushed and/or overwhelmed during this course? (Boolean)
Postworkshop Results
Success! The "No So Comfortable" Django responses went to 0, and the
comfortable responses went up. Nobody reported feeling rushed or overwhelmed in
the process. I also see that everyone who responded had used linux in the past,
and I know this wasn't the case when we were helping out attendees. So this
whole thing probably suffers a little bias.
But! Everyone seemed to have a good time, learn a little something, and not
get intimidated or feel uncomfortable. Those are the results we really cared
about.
Next Steps
For the next course, we need to
- Do a better job of surveying the class. More results will help us improve.
- Find a way to break up instruction/coding into more distinct segments to reduce downtime and crosstalk which may get confusing
- Use the more complete survey results effectively in order to cover desired topics
- Build a better interface for the course that attendees can reference (think website with tutorials and links all in one package)
Thanks again to all the teachers and sponsors!