Edward Brown edited innovations.tex  about 9 years ago

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\section{Innovations in AST 208}  \subsection{Collaborative work}  Throughout the semester, students work in teams of 3--4. These teams, which persist throughout the semester, are assigned during the second week based on responses to an online questionnaire using  (\catme). Of the lab grade, 15\% is determined via by  peer and self assessment on \catme\ and by participation (as participation, as  observed by the instructor). instructor.  The students periodically receive a link to a \catme\ peer evaluation form, in which they assess their team's work on recent labs. The goals of this peer assessment are 1) to stress the importance of being a patient, generous, and hard-working collaborator; 2) to think critically about one's own work and to measure that work against one's own expectations; and 3) to encourage all team members to contribute equally. \subsection{Introduction of numerical analysis}  Students are expected to do their lab work using \ipython\ notebooks. There are several reasons for adopting \texttt{Python}: it is widely used in astronomy; it is easy to learn but supports complex programming; it has powerful libraries---\np, \sp, and \plt---for numerical analysis and plotting; and the \ipython\ notebooks are relatively platform-independent.\footnote{To ensure a standard working environment, we currently have the students install a virtual machine (\href{https://www.virtualbox.org/}{VirtualBox}) running Ubuntu\textsuperscript{TM} Linux. Given the widespread availability of \ipython, we will likely drop the usage of virtual machines in subsequent editions of this course.}