Teaching Demo feedback: Setup page lacks nav links

[pawsey-kbuckley]

Hi there,

I'm submitting this "issue list", ahead of one or more PRs, as a result
of recently performing a Software Carpentry Instructor Training Teaching
Demo, during the preperation for the demo of which, I was scrutinisng
the content of "The Unix Shell" lesson quite (some might say too) intently,
and so noticed some things that PRs could address, assuming that the
Lesson and/or Style coveners agree that these things are in neeed of
addressing.

The first is a Styles issue:

• Inability to navigate away from the Setup page back to the Schedule

The first and last episodes of the lesson all contain "Up arrow"
navigating links that return the reader to the Schedule: why not
the Setup page?

It seems odd, given that the Setup page is accessed from the Schedule,
in the same way as the episode pages, that once you are reading the
Setup page there is no way to navigate back to the Schedule, in the same
was as the first and last episodes.

Note that I am not suggesting that there should be navigation links
from the Setup page to the first episode, as that would "break" the
navigation flow within the episodes, but I feel an "Up arrow" link to
the Schedule would be of benefit.

The remainder are specific to "The Unix Shell"

and so are not reproduced here but, if you are interested, can be found in
shell-novice issue 1036

As I say, I am happy to create and submit PRs for some, or all,
of the issues, but thought to flag the issues up first.

[brownsarahm]

Thank you for your very detailed issue and welcome to the community.

For getting to the schedule from the setup page or anywhere else in a lesson, "Home" in the menu bar does it, but perhaps that is unclear? Maybe there's a way to make that more clear. Being able to get back here is important.

However, people will navigate to and from the setup page from multiple different places, so I think keeping it as sort of independent is likely the least confusing. This is related to work in progress with an open request for comments from lesson maintainers to link the individual lesson Setup pages from the workshop websites instead of having setup/installation content on the workshop website. This means that users will (hopefully, if they follow instructions) be navigating from the workshop website to the Setup page of a lesson and then needing to get back to the workshop webpage to then get to the Setup page for the next lesson in the workshop they are about to attend. An arrow link that went to the schedule of a lesson would actually cause more confusion in that case, I think.

The focusing on a single lesson the way you did, is potentially something we do as instructors more often than what our learners do. I would lean toward reducing learner confusion at the expense of unclear navigation for instructors and self-paced users of the lesson materials. Making the setup process of multiple tools alone prior to arrival as easy as possible will make the actual, in-person workshops work the best.

[pawsey-kbuckley]

... and welcome to the community.

It was good to finally be accredited, Sarah, but rest-assured that
I have been "in the community" for a good while now.

Thanks also for the feedback as regards navigation when viewed
from a workshop perspective. It is certainly something that needs
consideration, although I'd suggest that the lessons are a stand
alone resource and so students who have been at workshops,
containing a number of lessons, are still likely to end up at the
individual lesson pages on GitHub.io when coming to reprise
the material after the workshop.

An arrow link that went to the schedule of a lesson would actually
cause more confusion in that case, I think.

Perhaps, in the way that workshop-specific renderings of lessons
are currently created using the defaults, that is the case, however,
whilst I could see that a workshop needs to be able to link to all of
the "setup" that's required, I would still suggest that, in the way
that workshop providers are encouraged to create a workshop-
specific rendering of the individual lessons, that the workshop-
specific navigation shoulld be confined to those pages, and that
the rendering of lessons within the "styles" repo be done with the
understanding that the lesson hosted within the styles repo is a
stand-alone resource, a template, if you like, for modified versions
that were delivered within a workshop.

The focusing on a single lesson the way you did, ...

I was actually focusing less on the single lesson that I was preparing
for the teaching demo, than I was on the abilitty for people to work
through the lesson materials offline (see my previous contributions to
the Carpentries), where learners would have effectively created their
own "workshops" from the individual lessons, hence the suggestion
that the rendering of those, via the "core" style containing nav links
that are self contained within the individual lessons, be implemented.

I feel that that the ability to ADD links that allow an individual lesson,
as rendered within its own GitHub.io location, to appear as part of a
known (read internal macro-defined) workshop is additional to the
core lesson itself.

Similarly, most lesson development is not done with reference to
a specific workshop implementation of a lesson, even though the
Carpentries would allow for customisation within an "on the day"
rendering, so again, individual lesson navigation, for me, needs
to be there within the "template" instantiation.

Just to close this post by saying that it's great to find that, as I did
with my very first posting to a then-Software Carpentry thread
(as regards the build system) that what I find interesting is already
being discussed within the community.

Yet another thread to try and follow,
Kevin