Has it been considered to split the counting & mining episode into two?

[morskyjezek]

I've taught the shell lesson twice online now (since we moved to zoom/video workshops in 2020), and the episode "Counting and Mining with the Shell" seems too long for this environment where it's nice to split up more frequently with short breaks. Has it been considered to split this episode to two episodes (first one on counting, using "wc") and a second one (on data mining/filtering, using "grep").

[emcaulay]

I was talking to @jmjamison about this issue at work today, and we were considering asking LC-CAC to look at it. I am not a maintainer on this lesson, so I don't have the privileges of assigning labels, but I think there is one for "refer to LC-CAC". the LC-CAC is the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee and they manage larger revisions.

[emcaulay]

If you look at this issue in the lesson I maintain (lc-overview), you'll see by scrolling through the discussion that I applied a status of refer-to-cac, and then I removed it after the CAC discussed at 2 meetings and reached some decisions. LibraryCarpentry/lc-overview#49

I hope that helps!

[morskyjezek]

Thanks @emcaulay - that woudl be fine. I don't seem to have the capability any more to add a label. Certainly don't object to this being discussed by CAC. On the other hand, I wasn't proposing any significant content changes, only the change in structure of lesson episodes, which would entail splitting and also modifying and updating the learning questions and outcomes.

I'll also share that I felt strongly about this two years ago when it was added, but I have taught the lesson since and didn't actually feel like this section was too long. So if there are others that feel strongly about this, please chime in. If not, I'd actually lean toward closing the issue.

Any thoughts @kaitlinnewson ? Or the maintainers group?

[kaitlinnewson]

After looking at the length of each episode in terms of lines, I can see that this episode is about double the length of the others, and the time estimate is 90 minutes (compared to 60/30/5 in other episodes). I think it could improve the user experience for learners and instructors to split it into 2 separate episodes. The only downside I can see is that any links to the episodes could break.

If there are no objections, I'll plan to split the episode up.

A couple of things that input on would be helpful for:

• Would the most suitable break point be "Mining or searching"?
• If above is the break point, what is the estimated length of time to teach each episode?