Welcome Back

Overview

Teaching: 5 min
Exercises: 5 min

Questions

• What have we learned so far?

• What will we focus on today?

Objectives

• Review main points we discussed yesterday.

• Introduce topics we will discuss today.

Yesterday we focused on general aspects of educational psychology and pedagogy. Today we will focus on the specifics of teaching Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and Library Carpentry workshops. We will look at the lessons that have been written by the Carpentries and discuss how to teach effective workshops. We will review specific teaching practices we follow at our workshops and practice using some of them. One of the most important practices is participatory live coding. You rarely find this approach in a current university setting so we’ll spend some time practicing this skill. We will conclude our training with a discussion about workshop logistics that will help you in preparing to teach your first workshop.

Questions

Yesterday we asked you to read some resources about the logistics of teaching and running Carpentries workshops. Please add your questions about logistics and preparation to the Etherpad. We will answer these questions in the etherpad during your work time and will return to this list later today.

This activity should take about 5 minutes.

Key Points

• Instructors guide learners to construct the proper big picture (accurate mental model) of the topic rather than focus on details.

• Instructors rely on frequent feedback from learners to monitor their own presentation of the material.

• Instructors introduce a few concepts at a time to avoid cognitive overload.

• The best way to motivate learners? Show them how to do something they can immediately put to use and be enthusiastic about it.

• Teaching is a learned skill.