Lesson #3: editing questions, plus suggestions for shell Guide and Reference

[annk1010]

Lesson #1 and #3 have the same questions at the top (and on the overall schedule), but different objectives. This can cause confusion for students new to Carpentry lessons and new to the shell. Since the questions listed are directly addressed in Lesson #1, I suggest more targeted questions for Lesson #3:

• How can I make a new file?

• How do I edit and rename files?

• Can I cancel a command in the shell?

• How can I reuse commands or view shell history?

Additionally, I have some thoughts on the resources used for teaching the UNIX Shell lesson.

Both times I took this lesson, I found it very confusing because neither instructor who taught the lesson shared the Reference. In the Guide, there is only a line under “Preparing to Teach” that says “reference.md can be printed out and given to students as a reference, your choice.” I think that this should be edited that the guide should be shared with students (not your choice), because it gives an overview of many of the arguments that will be used throughout the lesson. This might be me, but I’d suggest that always providing students with this document reduces cognitive overload by giving them the space to focus on learning how the shell works without having to remember arguments.

Reference.md could be updated with a few more key arguments. It is lacking some that may be important to students being able to apply the lesson quickly to their work:

• man -- important for students to be able to navigate the shell and complete tasks on their own

• history -- key for remembering functions and reproducing the same exercise when learning

• touch -- this argument may not make logical sense to new learners

[dakane1]

@annk1010 I will start working on the reference.md, there are a few other things I want to add as well!

[jmcgranahan]

this may be too advanced, but I'm not so sure. What about file permissions & ownership? I noticed there is no mention of this anywhere, yet this is one of the largest issues I face when working in the shell. This is especially important on a server, where multiple users are accessing the machine.

And then for automating tasks, there was no mention of the cron. Creating a script is great and is a huge step in the right direction, but if you really want to automate a task, you need to be able to use the cron and schedule a script to run. Maybe this could be added as an addendum?

[dakane1]

@jmcgranahan I created this as a new issue so it won't get buried in our finishing up our lesson release checklist items. The team will need to discuss this further.

[kaitlinnewson]

Sub-tasks for this issue:

• [ ] Evaluate questions at the beginning of episode 3
• [ ] Consider updating instructor guide to indicate that the reference should be shared with students. May want to look at what other lessons are doing here too.
• [x] Update reference.md to add man, history, and touch