Hey all, I actually ran my first full 2-day workshop last week, and agree with Bill's points on the blog post. Luckily I had a good mentor to help me through the process (thanks Damien Irving), but even then it was a steep learning experience, even though I've helped at bootcamps before and run smaller components.
Here are some of the major things I found challenging: - Existing instructions are out of date, and not kept all in one place. Luckily I was able to bug Damien to find out the correct and current process. - Pacing issues. All of the lessons took much longer than expected, which I suspect in part was due to me talking too much. It's hard to get a feel for how long lessons take just by reading through the material, and I just didn't have time to do a trial run beforehand. - Recommendations for instructor notes and multiple screens. Where do instructors keep them during the bootcamp? How do you keep track of the etherpad while the lesson material is on the screen? Plus some miscellaneous advice for other new instructors: - Standing up in front of a room for two days instructing was surprisingly exhausting - Bring a large bottle of water, as talking leaves you dehydrated very quickly. - If you're going to remember anything, get the intro right. It's much easier to instruct if you're mentally in the right place. - Last helper to arrive buys the instructor coffee if they're late ;) Running your first workshop is incredibly overwhelming so I completely agree with the strong mentoring suggestions. On the other hand I realise that's also a big ask on the mentors time so may not always be possible. On 15 December 2014 at 08:20, Karin Lagesen <[email protected]> wrote: > > Personally, I did attend a workshop before instructor training and > subsequently teaching my first workshop. But, I do not think that this > should be a requirement, just recommended. However, I think it somehow > should be a requirement that the person has taught before, although I am > not certain how this could be implemented. > > I also think that we should go heavier on mentoring first time > instructors, either online or in person, and (perhaps this goes without > saying) make sure that every new instructor teaches with a more experienced > instructor for their first workshop. I also think it should be made clear > that the more experienced instructor should get in touch with the newbie > instructor well in advance to discuss lessons and teaching. In hindsight, I > know that I should have prepared better before my first workshop, but I > didn't know that at the time. > > Karin > -- > Karin Lagesen, Ph.D. > Department of Medical Genetics > Oslo University Hospital > http://blog.karinlag.no > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists. > software-carpentry.org > -- ---- Scott Ritchie, BCompSci, MSc, Ph.D. Student, Medical Systems Biology Group, Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry, and Health Sciences, The University of Melbourne Parkville, Victoria, Australia W: http://www.inouyelab.org P: +61 3 9035 8916 E: [email protected] Research Community Co-ordinator for the Life Sciences & Software Carpentry Instructor for R and Data Science. Department of Research Platforms, The University of Melbourne. W: http://resbaz.tumblr.com/ W: http://software-carpentry.org/ President, Bioinformatics Graduate Student Association (BGSA), The University of Melbourne. W: http://bioinformatics.asn.au/bgsa/ F: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BGSA.melbourne/ E: [email protected] General Committee, COMBINE: The Regional Student Group (RSG) Australia; for the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) W: http://combine.org.au/ http://www.iscb.org/ ----
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