Pre-ESA Fixes & Refinement

[njlyon0]

Summary

After our practice session last week we identified a number of places where the course website could be made clearer and/or improved in other ways. The full notes document captures much of this but for convenience of working in the GH side of the course I'm summarizing those action items here.

Action Items

GitHub Repository

• Flesh out README of repo

General Website

• Merge Stevan's PR
• Add affiliations to contributors list
• Double check images throughout
• Add alt text to all images
  • Added alt text to about half of the images
• Double check links throughout
  • Esp. contributor links (several seemed broken)
  • Contributor links checked and broken ones removed
• Standardize text/header formatting among modules
• Add student introduction prompt & icebreaker to home page
  • Icebreaker = 'why are you interested in synthesis?'
• Add note to homepage that the website is a living resource
  • Encourage bookmarking / "starring" GitHub repo
• Tweak first-level header text to simplify text in browser tab
• Add break between modules 2 and 3 to agenda on homepage
  • Generally can increase specificity of that agenda

Module 1

• Fix broken image in 'process' section
  • "LTER-SWG-timeline.png" missing from images/ folder
  • Alt text for image missing closing quotes
• In 'why synthesis?' section, clarify connection between figure and synthesis section
• Consider a less NCEAS-specific version of the 'typical process' model
• Potential interactivity: student suggestions of other ideas in 'how to get involved' section

Module 2

• Move "contributing" bit of reproducibility practices to the first sub-section
• Move version control section beneath reproducibility
• Interactivity: After reproducibility section ask: 'what elements of reproducibility have you used/do you plan on using for your own projects?'. Also, 'what elements do you find valuable that are absent from our list?'
• Add Conventional Commits page to 'additional resources'
• Interactivity: Ask students how many work directly with data (e.g., data analysts, graduate students, etc.). What percentage of time spent cleaning/preparing data?
  • In 'data prep' section
• Improve case study format/content
  • Add more detail to case study descriptions (make it better as a standalone resource)
  • Clean up format of text/links + add GH icon
  • Add a non-LTER example

Module 3

• Interactivity: ask about prior experience with FAIR data / data principles
• Focus on 'how you include provenance metadata?'
• Consider including a slide deck to assist with this module
• Consider non-US repositories (current list is US-centric)
• Increase emphasis on Activity 2 (plus maybe move it earlier)
• Funding sources can be omitted (overlaps with module 1)

[njlyon0]

Created an issue for post-ESA tweaks so we can close this one / identify any final tasks before we close the book on this. See #5