Last Friday, I paid the course fee for S283 Planetary Science and the Search for life, which means I have now formally enrolled. I have linked it to the S10 Certificate in Astronomy and Planetary Science qualification. It starts on Saturday 4th October.
On last Saturday morning I had a tutorial associated with Python 3 week. I had completed the Python 3 activity a few days earlier, so this was only of a limited interest to me, but I attended anyway. It was a bit disorganised, which surprised me really, because this particular tutor is usually very good. I think a combination of the timing (Saturday morning is never a great time) and the Python changes didn't help matters. This is the first year that SM123 has used Jupyter notebooks (Python v3), whereas previous presentations have used Trinkets (Python v2). There are a lot of similarities, but many differences, and several tutors have not updated their notes and PowerPoint slides, which means making adjustments as they go along. This tutor, on this occasion, seemed uncharacteristically a little underprepared.
On Sunday, my tutor posted the student names for the Python 3 peer review exercise. The student who has been allocated to review my program rarely engages with the rest of the cohort. I am expected to review the program of somebody who isn't significantly better at the 'cooperation' aspect of the module either. The anticipated outcome of this malarky is very much unknown at this stage, but I suspect the tutor will post further details about what to do if I'm met with non-compliance.
The same tutor as the one allocating the names for the peer review exercise held a Python 3 skills tutorial on Monday. Only 3 other students attended, which is par for the course with these badly advertised events. I'm not entirely sure what they are for. I think they started off as some sort of pedagogic enrichment activity which has morphed into a 'I'm contracted to do it so I'd better get on and do it then' sessions. As with a lot of these initiatives, the senior academics who dreamt it up meant well, but it didn't quite turn out as they had hoped. I've attended all of them, and while none have been truly ghastly, some have definitely been better than others. Monday's effort was about average in the range. Python is definitely something that a lot of students struggle with, so the more tutorials the better really. Each tutor has a unique style and explains things in a slightly different way, so there is bound to be (at least) one that resonates and is useful to somebody. There is yet another Python 3 tutorial next Monday and I'm sure I'll be all Pythoned out by then.