We have a great group of volunteers with high technical knowledge who want to teach people skills that have made their work more efficient and reproducible. We also have a number of people who "only want to teach people who want to learn.” A potential for conflict arises when we have people who want to participate and bring our experiences to bear who teach students every day (disclosure - it me). Many of our students don’t see the immediate value of the material we teach. Teaching people who don’t want to learn is the defining struggle of being an educator. There are many reasons for this, but one I’ve found over the years is that an apathetic student is difficult to distinguish from a student who is hopelessly confused because the material ramped up too fast for their experience. Both can look bored, angry, embarrassed or belligerent. If we want to expand The Carpentries community to be more inclusive and welcoming, we need to take a hard look at the ways we fail.
I am running Data Carpentry as a semester-long course for the second time (shout out to Ethan and DC for the great resource) and have reached the mid-semester break. Once again I am reminded that until we break into independent projects, I may as well be teaching incantations. Teaching undergraduates with no programming background (and no comp sci classes on campus) to use R is difficult. Assigning a variable is a significant cognitive load. So, to get to the point and to echo Greg: yes, PLEASE join NABT, or even more related, the CSCC [1] if you feel that this is something that should be integrated into the general curriculum and given more weight at an academic level. There are large communities of educators out there who have been struggling with the issues of student motivation, metacognition, and assessment for years. -- Jeramia Ory (he/him/his) Associate Professor of Biochemistry Undergraduate Health Professions Advisor Saint Louis College of Pharmacy [1] http://www.ccsc.org/ On Thu, Oct 4, 2018 at 9:26 AM April Wright via discuss < [email protected]> wrote: > "Regarding your second, I think you've set an impossible problem: if > learners are extrinsically motivated (doing it because they have to), then > we've lost before we start playing [2]. In my experience, Carpentry > workshops work because people already have the problems we're showing them > how to > solve; if they don't, then we're in the same unhappy boat as first-year > linear algebra courses." > > And yet, people teach first-year algebra every year. To some extent, there > has to be a shift in how you think about things when you're teaching a > university course, particularly for undergraduates. I don't think every > student who takes my genetics course is doing that because of a deep and > abiding love of genetics. My computational bio classroom is mostly people > who have some intrinsic motivation (MS students with data, faculty with > data, undergrads who are getting into research). Some don't that motivation > - maybe they took a class with me before, maybe this was the only > upper-division elective that fits in their schedule and they need to > graduate. That's fine! If you have a bunch of undergraduates, the goal > might not be that everyone leaves the semester having made some pipeline > more reproducible, and with a laptop of scientific software. With > undergraduates, the goal might be that they leave the semester thinking > about problems differently, or maybe they're able to explain something they > hear on the news better, or maybe they remember having fun chatting about > research and computation with a group of scientists. > > Admittedly, my perspective is really strongly influenced by being a > first-generation college student - I didn't know to do any of this. And my > students are heavily skewed towards being first generation, and often > "trying on" different ways of being scientists. We teach the students we > have, and that means meeting them where they are, not necessarily where we > want them to be. > > --a > --------- > Assistant Professor, Southeastern Louisiana University > Biology Department > 403 Biology Building > 2400 N. Oak St > Hammond, LA. 70402 > 512.940.5761 > https://paleantology.com/the-wright-lab/ > <http://wrightaprilm.github.io/pages/about_me.html> > > > On Thu, Oct 4, 2018 at 7:30 AM Gerard Capes <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Further to Greg's comment: >> >> > Regarding your >> > second, I think you've set an impossible problem: if learners are >> > extrinsically motivated (doing it because they have to), then we've lost >> > before we start playing [2]. >> >> >> This matches my experience. I recently scheduled a few SWC lessons run as >> one-day training courses for a Centre for Doctoral Training. Learners were >> a mix of the CDT group for whom participation was compulsory, and other >> PhD/Post-Doc researchers at the university who were there of their own free >> will. At least half the CDT group didn't see the merit in learning the >> material and disrupted the course for those who did want to learn. >> >> This isn't something I plan to repeat - I only want to teach people who >> want to learn. >> >> Thanks >> Gerard >> -- >> Gerard Capes >> Research Applications, IT Services, University Of Manchester >> ------------------------------------------ >> The Carpentries: discuss >> Permalink: >> https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tad9e416c2ec4742e-Md91b235d2db9487c79eb2589 >> Delivery options: >> https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/subscription >> > *The Carpentries <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/latest>* / discuss / > see discussions <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss> + > participants <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/members> + > delivery > options <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/subscription> > Permalink > <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tad9e416c2ec4742e-M93bac088159fc4c4e674b385> > -- Jeramia ------------------------------------------ The Carpentries: discuss Permalink: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tad9e416c2ec4742e-Mc13ed892f722fd3c25622041 Delivery options: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/subscription
