Feature: Project Rubrics

[01zulfi]

Alternate title: Curriculum Checkpoints

Description

Every project could have an accompanying “rubric”. That “rubric” will hold useful information regarding its project.

What does the "rubric" cover?

1. Why is there a need for a project at this point in the curriculum? (defining the need)
2. What previously discussed lessons/concepts are relevant in this project? (defining the scope)
3. How will this project help solidify the concepts from the previous lessons? (defining the spec)
4. Will the student be required to research never before discussed concepts to fulfill the project criteria? What would those concepts likely be?
5. List of the concepts learnt when the spec of the project is fulfilled.

How could this be useful?

• Projects don’t change often. Neither are they removed or replaced often. But later down the line, in case a project needs to be replaced/removed, there would already be a predefined criteria which will ease the replacement//removal.
• Having rubrics for current projects will make the maintainers more conscious of the need of new projects.
• When the structure for a project rubric is in place, it will allow for easier addition of projects in new courses down the line.
• Writing out a rubric will also force the maintainers to think about the current projects more in depth, and that might bring needed changes to a current project’s spec.

Things to consider

• Workload
  • Massive curriculum wide undertaking.
  • Suggestion: Start with the foundations projects only to see how it goes.
• Implementation
  • Will the project page link to its rubric? Will there be a dedicated page on the website for rubrics?
• Spoilers
  • The "rubric" must be written in a way that doesn't spoil say, the calculator project for someone who's currently working on the calculator project.
• Value
  • How much value will it add to the curriculum vs the work done?

[thatblindgeye]

Adding the Discussion label to keep this more open for discussion rather than for someone to claim or anything. To be clear, would this be an internal rubric, or something users going through the curriculum would also be able to see in some form?

[01zulfi]

To be clear, would this be an internal rubric, or something users going through the curriculum would also be able to see in some form?

It will serve as an internal rubric. I believe it will be an indispensable tool for the maintainers. Though, I'm inclined to making it available for the users to view. This will open doors for contributions and improvement of the rubric.

I am open to further discussion regarding this point.

[thatblindgeye]

I think an internal rubric could be useful, but I'm not entirely sure about having such a rubric be viewable by users going through the curriculum (at least maybe not in its entirety). Being able to answer the questions you posed in the original post I could see definitely helping with deciding whether an idea should become a project, or if perhaps an exercise would be more fitting.

I don't think I have any other comments right now, but will definitely keep this open for discussion from other maintainers.