A dream?

A dream?

[Marko Schuetz-Schmuck]

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Dear All,

I teach some software engineering courses and in each of them students
work on semester-long projects in teams. So far, have let them choose
their own tools for all the tasks (implementation language,
documentation tools, etc.). Personally, I have been using org-mode for
what feels like forever. I was thinking that it would be nice to have
students use org-mode also for their project. I can see it provide so
many features that would benefit the projects: easy links for
e.g. traceability, tagging of requirements for categorizing, responsible
developer,..., of course todo lists, priorities, progress tracking,
rendering to web page, PDF,...

Since these are students from a very technical background I would hope
they would be open to this.

Anyway, does anyone have any experience related to this, maybe not
specifically related to teaching, but software engineering projects
(with documentation of domain, requirements, project approach, progress,
references, source code, testing, design, etc. etc. etc.)?

Best regards,

Marko

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Re: A dream?

[Rob Sargent]

On 4/3/23 07:52, Marko Schuetz-Schmuck wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> I teach some software engineering courses and in each of them students
> work on semester-long projects in teams. So far, have let them choose
> their own tools for all the tasks (implementation language,
> documentation tools, etc.). Personally, I have been using org-mode for
> what feels like forever. I was thinking that it would be nice to have
> students use org-mode also for their project. I can see it provide so
> many features that would benefit the projects: easy links for
> e.g. traceability, tagging of requirements for categorizing, responsible
> developer,..., of course todo lists, priorities, progress tracking,
> rendering to web page, PDF,...
>
> Since these are students from a very technical background I would hope
> they would be open to this.
>
> Anyway, does anyone have any experience related to this, maybe not
> specifically related to teaching, but software engineering projects
> (with documentation of domain, requirements, project approach, progress,
> references, source code, testing, design, etc. etc. etc.)?
>
> Best regards,
>
> Marko
I predict, given that you've already allowed them to 'choose their own 
tools', insisting on something as esoteric as org mode will meet much 
resistance (unless of course they've already chosen emacs as their one 
tool).

If you do go down that path, insist also on exactly one (1) of the 
available export targets.

Re: A dream?

[indieterminacy]

On 03-04-2023 15:52, Marko Schuetz-Schmuck wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> I teach some software engineering courses and in each of them students
> work on semester-long projects in teams. So far, have let them choose
> their own tools for all the tasks (implementation language,
> documentation tools, etc.). Personally, I have been using org-mode for
> what feels like forever. I was thinking that it would be nice to have
> students use org-mode also for their project. I can see it provide so
> many features that would benefit the projects: easy links for
> e.g. traceability, tagging of requirements for categorizing, 
> responsible
> developer,..., of course todo lists, priorities, progress tracking,
> rendering to web page, PDF,...
> 
> Since these are students from a very technical background I would hope
> they would be open to this.
> 
> Anyway, does anyone have any experience related to this, maybe not
> specifically related to teaching, but software engineering projects
> (with documentation of domain, requirements, project approach, 
> progress,
> references, source code, testing, design, etc. etc. etc.)?
> 

Ive spent time working on making uses with Gemtext - the format that 
supports the protocol, Gemini.

Here is a non orgmode example (developed with GeneNetwork), which covers 
knowledge and kanban-boards,
featuring a simple parsing of a Gemtext repo - with people contributing 
within different folders
https://github.com/genenetwork/gn-gemtext-threads

Its available on the CLI via Tissue (Guile).
Here is a talk going into it:
https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/tissue/

Here is is exported to html, via Skribilo:
https://issues.genenetwork.org/topics/guix-system-containers-and-how-we-use-them

That particular Gemtext file that generated that example can be found 
via the blame icon (this approach works via git-blame):
https://github.com/genenetwork/gn-gemtext-threads/blame/main/topics/guix-system-containers-and-how-we-use-them.gmi

I hope that helps.

-- 
Jonathan McHugh
indieterminacy@libre.brussels

Re: A dream?

[George Mauer]

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Emacs is a complex tool that itself can take a semester or more to get
productive in. I know I myself tried for years to move to it and was only
able to after learning vim bindings pretty well, and starting to use
Spacemacs. Forcing students to use emacs, much less org - especially in
this day and age where students *will* ask online, and *will* get a
response of "no one actually uses that" - will probably meet with a ton of
resistance.

On Mon, Apr 3, 2023 at 9:03 AM Marko Schuetz-Schmuck <MarkoSchuetz@web.de>
wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> I teach some software engineering courses and in each of them students
> work on semester-long projects in teams. So far, have let them choose
> their own tools for all the tasks (implementation language,
> documentation tools, etc.). Personally, I have been using org-mode for
> what feels like forever. I was thinking that it would be nice to have
> students use org-mode also for their project. I can see it provide so
> many features that would benefit the projects: easy links for
> e.g. traceability, tagging of requirements for categorizing, responsible
> developer,..., of course todo lists, priorities, progress tracking,
> rendering to web page, PDF,...
>
> Since these are students from a very technical background I would hope
> they would be open to this.
>
> Anyway, does anyone have any experience related to this, maybe not
> specifically related to teaching, but software engineering projects
> (with documentation of domain, requirements, project approach, progress,
> references, source code, testing, design, etc. etc. etc.)?
>
> Best regards,
>
> Marko
>

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Re: A dream?

[Martin Steffen]

Hi,

I also do some teaching, different courses, in earlier times lab
courses/project work, recently a quite large bachelor level course.

Some of the courses (like the ones mentioned) require keeping track of
many, many details (from my side), including administrational,
organizational stuff, open issues web-pages, instructions, exercizes,
deadlines, exams, grading etc).

To keep all of that under control, I use org. Also managing the masses
of students, I get a bunch of student assistents and graders that needs
also to be organized and, including a ``lead student assistent'' that
helps orchestrating the other student assistents (and the students
taking the course). For those cordinating tasks, keeping an overview, 
use org (though special tasks require special other solutions. For
instance, slides are done in latex, and ultimately, information, like
exam results, have to be uploaded into official administrative tool).


Some of the student assistants actually also use org. Some master level
students (not just the assistents) in another course use org as well for
things like documentation. For courses that involve more extensive
course work I use git and seem students appreciate that github honors
org as format for simple documentation and readmes etc.

That being said, it seems that among students I have in my courses,
markdown is more popular for such simple web-compatible documentations.
Also most student assistants use md, only some do org.


For really collaborative course works (like multiple students track
stuff on a joint project or all students need to have the same
org-setup), I never imposed org as format. Org is too flexible, perhaps,
as soon as one get's into it, everyone has one's own specific style to
use various features and it's tricky to get comfortable with someone
else's style (and _forcing_ all of them to adhere to one predescribed
style probably takes away what makes org great and makes it cumbersome.)

As a general observation in courses I gave where documentation (of
features, interfaces, plans, etc) was required (but where I did not
necessarily specified the exact tool or format), the best groups were
those that wrote the documentation not for me (``gee, the lecturer wants
some documentation, it seems mandatory, let's write up something for him
who cares anyway'') but those that realized that for a successful
collaboration and project they themselves profit from cleanly stating
and writing things.

And sometimes a well-organized Todo.txt-file does the job, as long as
the people feel it's the best solution for them. Though an org-file sure
would be superior.

So I think the tricky part will be to convince some of them, that doing
org is not some weird idiosyncrasy of the teacher, but may actually be
helpful. But that's hard. If you are grown up with eclipse or whatever
for hacking, and first have to learn yourself emacs, to learn yourself
org, to ultimately see the light, that org is good for todo lists in the
course, the semester is sure over...


For projects where something like a overall and common issue-tracker for
bugs etc was required for _all_ I normally also did not rely on org (or
do-what-you want-as-long-as-its-clean-and-helpful-for-you), but on
specialized issue-trackers, in the last course, github-issues .


best, Martin



>>>>> "Marko" == Marko Schuetz-Schmuck <MarkoSchuetz@web.de> writes:

    Marko> Dear All,

    Marko> I teach some software engineering courses and in each of them
    Marko> students work on semester-long projects in teams. So far,
    Marko> have let them choose their own tools for all the tasks
    Marko> (implementation language, documentation tools,
    Marko> etc.). Personally, I have been using org-mode for what feels
    Marko> like forever. I was thinking that it would be nice to have
    Marko> students use org-mode also for their project. I can see it
    Marko> provide so many features that would benefit the projects:
    Marko> easy links for e.g. traceability, tagging of requirements for
    Marko> categorizing, responsible developer,..., of course todo
    Marko> lists, priorities, progress tracking, rendering to web page,
    Marko> PDF,...

    Marko> Since these are students from a very technical background I
    Marko> would hope they would be open to this.

    Marko> Anyway, does anyone have any experience related to this,
    Marko> maybe not specifically related to teaching, but software
    Marko> engineering projects (with documentation of domain,
    Marko> requirements, project approach, progress, references, source
    Marko> code, testing, design, etc. etc. etc.)?

    Marko> Best regards,

    Marko> Marko

Re: A dream?

[Pedro Andres Aranda Gutierrez]

Hi Marko,

I'm teaching myself and have some lectures written with org and
exported through beamer.
It started because it is skeleton mode presentations on steroids and
it saves me a lot of time.

In my case, I don't force emacs+org-mode (as someone has already said,
they google around and desist from even taking a look behind the
scenes). What I do is showcasing. In my Python lectures, modifying the
code and showing the modified results live, both on my emacs and on
the presentation, is sort of a powerful teaser.

I follow with a couple of slides on emacs à la 'configuration for
dummies' and a small zip file with a minimal config for org and LaTeX
for the interested ones.

I can't claim a landslide, but I have a couple of 'adepts' who then go
on to use it in their professional lives every year...

Best, /PA

-- 
Fragen sind nicht da, um beantwortet zu werden,
Fragen sind da um gestellt zu werden
Georg Kreisler

Headaches with a Juju log:
unit-basic-16: 09:17:36 WARNING juju.worker.uniter.operation we should
run a leader-deposed hook here, but we can't yet

Re: A dream?

[Jean Louis]

* George Mauer <gmauer@gmail.com> [2023-04-03 18:17]:
> Emacs is a complex tool that itself can take a semester or more to get
> productive in. I know I myself tried for years to move to it and was only
> able to after learning vim bindings pretty well, and starting to use
> Spacemacs. Forcing students to use emacs, much less org - especially in
> this day and age where students *will* ask online, and *will* get a
> response of "no one actually uses that" - will probably meet with a ton of
> resistance.

We have got no problem to let staff members use Emacs in East
Africa. I have not get any protest yet, people are interested. 

I have seen American surgeon and his brother from university totally
delighted with the usage of Emacs and "how everything works in one
program". They kept asking what is it.

Here is how to verify usability of Emacs, once you verify it, let us
know:

Usability 101: Introduction to Usability:
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/

How Many Test Users in a Usability Study?:
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-many-test-users/

Usability Testing 101:
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-testing-101/

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: A dream?

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2023 at 2:16 PM
> From: "Jean Louis" <bugs@gnu.support>
> To: "George Mauer" <gmauer@gmail.com>
> Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: A dream?
>
> * George Mauer <gmauer@gmail.com> [2023-04-03 18:17]:
> > Emacs is a complex tool that itself can take a semester or more to get
> > productive in. I know I myself tried for years to move to it and was only
> > able to after learning vim bindings pretty well, and starting to use
> > Spacemacs. Forcing students to use emacs, much less org - especially in
> > this day and age where students *will* ask online, and *will* get a
> > response of "no one actually uses that" - will probably meet with a ton of
> > resistance.

We ran it on the International Space Station.  If that is the response of students,
then they are lame bro,
 
> We have got no problem to let staff members use Emacs in East
> Africa. I have not get any protest yet, people are interested. 
> 
> I have seen American surgeon and his brother from university totally
> delighted with the usage of Emacs and "how everything works in one
> program". They kept asking what is it.
> 
> Here is how to verify usability of Emacs, once you verify it, let us
> know:
> 
> Usability 101: Introduction to Usability:
> https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/
> 
> How Many Test Users in a Usability Study?:
> https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-many-test-users/
> 
> Usability Testing 101:
> https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-testing-101/
> 
> -- 
> Jean
> 
> Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
> https://www.fsf.org/campaigns
> 
> In support of Richard M. Stallman
> https://stallmansupport.org/
> 
> 

Re: A dream?

[Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide]

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Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com> writes:

> We ran it on the International Space Station.  If that is the response of students,
> then they are lame bro,

Is there a writeup of this? Or a talk? “Emacs on the ISS” would be a
great story to share!

Best wishes,
Arne
-- 
Unpolitisch sein
heißt politisch sein,
ohne es zu merken.
draketo.de

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Re: A dream?

[Eduardo Ochs]

On Sat, 15 Apr 2023 at 16:19, Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> wrote:
>
> * George Mauer <gmauer@gmail.com> [2023-04-03 18:17]:
> > Emacs is a complex tool that itself can take a semester or more to get
> > productive in. I know I myself tried for years to move to it and was only
> > able to after learning vim bindings pretty well, and starting to use
> > Spacemacs. Forcing students to use emacs, much less org - especially in
> > this day and age where students *will* ask online, and *will* get a
> > response of "no one actually uses that" - will probably meet with a ton of
> > resistance.
>
> We have got no problem to let staff members use Emacs in East
> Africa. I have not get any protest yet, people are interested.
>
> I have seen American surgeon and his brother from university totally
> delighted with the usage of Emacs and "how everything works in one
> program". They kept asking what is it.
>
> Here is how to verify usability of Emacs, once you verify it, let us
> know:
>
> Usability 101: Introduction to Usability:
> https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/
>
> How Many Test Users in a Usability Study?:
> https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-many-test-users/
>
> Usability Testing 101:
> https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-testing-101/


Hi Jean,

do you have a page in https://gnu.support/ explaining in detail how
you teach Emacs to beginners? It would be nice to have something like
that...

Btw, I've taught Emacs to beginners many times, but as "Emacs-the-
Lisp-environment", not as "Emacs-the-editor"... in some cases, like in
LaTeX workshops, lots of students who had never used Emacs before were
happily writing their own one-line elisp hyperlinks and defuns after
just one hour, but in some other cases my approach failed miserably...

  Cheers,
    Eduardo Ochs
    http://anggtwu.net/#eev
    http://anggtwu.net/eev-intros/find-eev-quick-intro.html
    http://anggtwu.net/eev-intros/find-elisp-intro.html

Re: A dream?

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2023 at 10:33 AM
> From: "Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide" <arne_bab@web.de>
> To: "Christopher Dimech" <dimech@gmx.com>
> Cc: "Jean Louis" <bugs@gnu.support>, "George Mauer" <gmauer@gmail.com>, emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: A dream?
>
> 
> Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com> writes:
> 
> > We ran it on the International Space Station.  If that is the response of students,
> > then they are lame bro,
> 
> Is there a writeup of this? Or a talk? “Emacs on the ISS” would be a
> great story to share!
> 
> Best wishes,
> Arne

Felicitations Arne.  Have not made any talks about it.  But would be a good idea since
you mention it.  You are at Karlsruhe, right? 

> -- 
> Unpolitisch sein
> heißt politisch sein,
> ohne es zu merken.
> draketo.de
>

Re: A dream?

[Jean Louis]

* Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com> [2023-04-15 22:37]:
> 
> > Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2023 at 2:16 PM
> > From: "Jean Louis" <bugs@gnu.support>
> > To: "George Mauer" <gmauer@gmail.com>
> > Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> > Subject: Re: A dream?
> >
> > * George Mauer <gmauer@gmail.com> [2023-04-03 18:17]:
> > > Emacs is a complex tool that itself can take a semester or more to get
> > > productive in. I know I myself tried for years to move to it and was only
> > > able to after learning vim bindings pretty well, and starting to use
> > > Spacemacs. Forcing students to use emacs, much less org - especially in
> > > this day and age where students *will* ask online, and *will* get a
> > > response of "no one actually uses that" - will probably meet with a ton of
> > > resistance.
> 
> We ran it on the International Space Station.  If that is the response of students,
> then they are lame bro,

My child of 11 years writes fantasy book using Emacs, and I did not
teach him at all how to use it, he just learned it on different
computer himself.

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: A dream?

[Jean Louis]

* Eduardo Ochs <eduardoochs@gmail.com> [2023-04-16 01:45]:
> do you have a page in https://gnu.support/ explaining in detail how
> you teach Emacs to beginners? It would be nice to have something like
> that...

I just tell them to do Emacs Tutorial. There is no need for page when
it is built-in.

I tell them, open Emacs and do the tutorial, then let me know. Later
we do not talk much, we just do the work.

> Btw, I've taught Emacs to beginners many times, but as "Emacs-the-
> Lisp-environment", not as "Emacs-the-editor"... in some cases, like in
> LaTeX workshops, lots of students who had never used Emacs before were
> happily writing their own one-line elisp hyperlinks and defuns after
> just one hour, but in some other cases my approach failed miserably...

Answer is simple:
(info "(eintr) Top")

You could use that as curriculum for the workshop. 

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: A dream?

[Adolfo De Unanue]

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Hi Pedro,

Do you mind to share those slides? I am teaching too and that will help me a lot 
Thanks in advance

- Adolfo

On Mon, Apr 17, 2023, at 23:35, Pedro Andres Aranda Gutierrez wrote:
> > Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>:
> >> Eduardo Ochs <eduardoochs@gmail.com> [2023-04-16 01:45]:
> >> do you have a page in https://gnu.support/ explaining in detail how
> >> you teach Emacs to beginners? It would be nice to have something like
> >> that...
> >
> >I just tell them to do Emacs Tutorial. There is no need for page when
> >it is built-in.
> >
> >I tell them, open Emacs and do the tutorial, then let me know. Later
> >we do not talk much, we just do the work.
> 
> In addition to that, I have also collected a set of slides with suggestions and
> quick answers to some of the configuration hurdles. That helps a lot (they say)
> In addition, I have an article on org-mode. 
> I submitted to the (wrong) journal and never got published on paper ,-(
> That was a couple of years ago and I have continued to update it for my personal
> reference. When people have specific interest in org-mode I pass 
> the lastest version in PDF and org for them to play around. The teaser for this
> is any of my lecture handouts.
> 
> Best, /PA
> 
> --
> Fragen sind nicht da, um beantwortet zu werden,
> Fragen sind da um gestellt zu werden
> Georg Kreisler
> 
> Headaches with a Juju log:
> unit-basic-16: 09:17:36 WARNING juju.worker.uniter.operation we should run a leader-deposed hook here, but we can't yet

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