[skill-activity] Trim environment reference side quest to reduce cognitive load

[github-actions]

What changed

Edited workshop/side-quest-01-02-environment-reference.md:

• Merged each "Conceptual screenshots" subsection's full sentence of prose into a short bolded one-line caption under each image, since the glossary table above already explains each tool's role.
• Trimmed the glossary table's "What it means" and "When you use it" columns to remove phrasing duplicated elsewhere on the page.
• Shortened the enterprise note, the "Verify your tools are ready" notes, and the intro/learning-objective lines.
• Shortened image alt text while preserving accessibility (still describes the depicted UI).
• Added a short "Quick self-check" recall question right before the checkpoint.
• Kept all nine tool/environment entries, the ## :white_check_mark: Checkpoint section, and its checklist items unchanged.

Word count: 1,433 → 891 words (just under the 800–900 cognitive-load target), with no loss of content coverage.

Which learner pain point this addresses

This was the lowest-scoring file (4.93/10.0) in the automated curriculum quality evaluation, flagged for:

• active_learning (2.1): very low practice density — nine near-identical screenshot+sentence blocks in a row with little hands-on interaction.
• cognitive_load (6.3): 1,433 words, the longest file in the corpus, nearly double the ~800-word guideline.

The curriculum-eval issue's root cause analysis (per Mayer's Multimedia Principle and Sweller's Cognitive Load Theory) noted that nine sequential "screenshot + one sentence" blocks trigger split-attention/redundancy effects without adding proportional learning value, since the glossary table already covers the same information.

Why it helps workshop flow

This is an optional reference page learners may consult repeatedly throughout the workshop. Reducing its length and redundancy makes it faster to scan when a learner just wants to look up one term, while the new self-check adds a lightweight retrieval-practice moment before the existing checkpoint — without removing any of the nine tool/environment entries or the verification steps.

Target per the curriculum-eval improvement prompt: bring word count under ~900 while preserving all content and the checkpoint — achieved (891 words).

Warning

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Generated by 🧩 Workshop Skill Activity Author · copilot · auto · 77.7 AIC · ⌖ 17 AIC · ⊞ 8.3K · ◷

• expires on Oct 3, 2026, 2:49 AM UTC

[github-actions]

This pull request was automatically closed because it expired on 2026-10-03T02:49:08.847Z.

Closed by Workflow