Removing Additional Resources from lessons

[bycdiaz]

I'm growing a little weary of what additional resources are doing in the lessons. As far as I'm aware, we don't have a formal definition of what they are, which I think is part of the problem. The current statement on the lessons on them is: This section contains helpful links to related content. It isn’t required, so consider it supplemental.

Are Additional Resources a place to gather content that is similar to what the lesson covers? Does it cover lesson content in greater depth? Things that are nice to know? How does a learner know it will be useful unless they actually engage with the content?

I also know that I've personally removed Additional Resources that felt completely inappropriate. I recall this PR where a whole book was recommended but would have been a very deep rabbit hole for someone at that point in the curriculum.

There is also currently an Additional Resource that points learners to several sites where they can work on increasing their typing speed. It's just my opinion but I don't see this as being productive at all in a curriculum about learning to code, especially in a lesson focused on Motivation and Mindset.

In the Command Line Basics lesson, there is an Additional Resource that points learners to a flash card app for commands, which I think goes against the spirit of our usual position of avoiding rote memorization.

The Function Basics lesson has an Additional Resource that points to a long video that touches on the call stack. While the information is useful generally, I don't know that it is useful at that point of someone's learning.

Sharing all these examples to point out that there doesn't seem to be a lot of utility in Additional Resources presently. I didn't examine every lesson but I suspect there is more out there.

My sense is that we need to either:

• drop the Additional Resources section entirely
• review additional resources to ensure they are useful or relevant.

But on the point of the 2nd option: if something is useful or relevant and we are reluctant to drop it for its usefulness and relevance, it should be in the lesson itself and not an additional resource.

[mao-sz]

Linking #28713 since it's directly relevant to this.

To echo my thoughts from back then (they haven't changed), I'm personally on board with the idea of having a much concrete definition of what additional resources are, if we want to keep them per lesson as we currently have them.

A more concrete definition allows the team to more easily vet if a resource is of genuine benefit for the lesson or if it's just alternative wording that someone else personally clicked with better. That opens doors to a million PRs for a million alternative wordings for the same topic that a million people individually found they clicked better with.

Better yet IMHO, scrap additional resources in lessons entirely. Haven't thought too much about exactly how an alternative like project-end/section-end/course-end additional resources could be implemented and examples of such. But as far as lesson-specific ARs go, I agree that I couldn't see much utility before and still can't see the utility now.

Alternative wordings/tutorials

Feels weird to "endorse" some resources and not others, even if they're all equally as good as alternatives to anything in the main lesson/assignment. If it seems significantly valuable to include because it offers a different angle to the same problem, they should be assigned resources like how things are often handled in various Foundations lessons. Otherwise, instead of including these sorts of ARs, the curriculum should put more focus on pushing the idea of independent research.

Resources that cover things not in the lesson/assignments

If they're significantly valuable enough, they should be assigned resources. Else it feels odd having such a discrepancy and if they're not valuable enough for the main lesson/assignment, do we need them at all?

An example is in Object Basics where it's there to introduce the arguments object. Honestly, not sure why that needs to be linked? Many style guides enforce avoiding using arguments and recommend using rest params instead, so it's not like knowing about arguments is super vital anyway. And it feels a little random in the lesson, like it's there just because it's also an object and hasn't been mentioned before.

Another example is loaders in the React Router lesson. Not covered specifically in the lesson but a separate thing used within the same concepts in the lesson. They provide an alternative way of handling certain situations and are very useful, and are a bit "hidden" if you're not made aware of them directly. I'm torn on how best to handle this, as I'm not convinced they're vital enough to need to dedicate main lesson content on them, yet I do see the value in awareness of them. So perhaps there is a way to integrate them into the lesson itself in a "side" way.

"Helpful" but non-essential extras

E.g. cheat sheets, further examples of specific situations

Example is the flexbox cheat sheet in the Axes. I'm not always a fan of cheat sheets (like Emmet ones or whatever) but this flexbox one has proven useful in the community. It can 100% be integrated into the lesson content as part of a sentence (doesn't need to have the "weight" of an assigned resource).

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So yeah, I know I personally closed quite a lot of issues/PRs suggesting ARs that didn't feel like they provided significant value, and I think either a much stricter, concrete definition of the AR section, or its removal will make it much easier for the team to vet and improve lessons. It also avoids it becoming a "this is helpful but don't want to put work into integrating it in more detail, so I'll just shove it in the AR section with a small note"

[bycdiaz]

I just clicked the issue you linked. I completely forget we had discussed this. Wow. ha ha

[mao-sz]

It's a big thing to discuss and take action if any, so it definitely needs a big team consensus.

[mao-sz]

As an aside, I wonder if the default content for Additional resources when empty should avoid mentioning the "help us expand this section by contributing..." bit. I suspect that it's encouraged some people to PR some resources for the sake of it and less because it's seems like a genuinely helpful resource that fills some gap in the lesson or pain point in the community.

I've seen plenty of PRs "because there were no additional resources" over time.

Wondering if the removal of that sentence from the default content would be a useful action aside from the rest of this discussion. It would of course mean the TOP003 rule needs to be amended, and will result in new lint test failures (that can be fixed with the appropriate fix:* script)

[ivanRsalcedo]

I'm 11 days and 87% into Foundations, and I’d like to give some input.

To start, I came in with some light programming background. I knew the basics of arrays and functions from a few tutorials in the past. I'm not a beginner but I'm also not that far. That said, I do think the Additional Resources section is pretty helpful to have, especially when something in the main content doesn’t quite click.

For example, Flexbox is one of those things that took a while for me to understand at all. I even feel like watching a video now just to refresh on it. Flexbox Froggy was in the Additional Resources and the way it was worded ("a funny little game...") made me curious enough to try it. It helped me grasp flexbox, and was a fun and cute contrast to the seriousness (in a good way) of TOP too. Perhaps froggy deserves a place in the main resources, heh.

I’ve seen a few videos from the AR section too. Since most of the main content is reading-based, I usually look to the AR section for visual/audio reinforcement. That said, I usually don’t use more than 1 in a lesson, and there can be 3 or even 6 sometimes listed.

I also imagine ARs might be even more important for those with zero background to start.

So, I’m a little hesitant about the idea of removing the section entirely. I also think the main resources in TOP are already fantastic and well-curated. TOP is well-regarded. I haven't seen anyone complain about it on forums. The ARs might play a part in that perhaps, assuming they've been around long.

I'm on board with it being improved on!

Some random ideas on that:

• Making the items collapsed by default (though there’s something nice about seeing them without extra clicks, like the froggy example. I might not have went with it otherwise.)
• Checking if some lessons lack a variety of content formats.
• Sometimes I'm unsure whether a link is a video. It's nice when it says "watch" or "video" in the list item text so I know already what to click.

Also it might be good to look at the comments of some of the Youtube videos to evaluate the AR. There's sometimes brutal honesty there, for better or worse.

Anyway, just wanted to give my perspective as a TOP-noob. Been doing about 2-4 hours a day and enjoying it. I think you all have something great already. Thank you for the thoughtfulness you’re putting into these kinds of decisions.

[goran1010]

I agree that the Additional Resources section, at the very least, needs a serious looking over, to comb over and remove the unnecessary, outdated or flat out unhelpful links.
One example, from a recently closed issue, #29853, shows an Additional Resources link, that straight up has HTML CSS and JS code to fully complete the project that the lesson in question has as an assignment.

My guess is that, that link got in, because Additional Resources section, has a lot looser definition of what is useful, and over time a lot of unhelpful links were added.