Hi Paul and thanks for your answer. We are going to do a trial round soon,
running the beginning of the planned course with a small group of students, and
I will definitely try out your ‘no lecturing’ approach at least once!
Lex
> On 04 Oct 2016, at 15:13, Paul Wilson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hi Lex,
>
> I have been teaching in a room like this for many years now. My course is
> related to the use of particular methods and some particular software, but
> most sessions are not much different from live coding. I find it to be
> immensely satisfying, largely because of the ease of moving around among the
> students to help them with their challenges and road blocks. It does take
> some careful planning to identify exercises that will keep students occupied
> in a constructive and productive way - I'm still massaging my exercises. A
> key element of my implementation, and many of my peers who use the same
> space, it to plan on spending NO time lecturing to the whole class. Instead,
> we plan to spend our time bouncing from table to table as we help each group
> with the particular issue they may be facing. Under this model, your
> concerns about walking to the screens, etc, are somewhat alleviated, but it
> does require some change in approach (which you may or may not be interested
> in for lots of good reasons :) ).
> I do occasionally use the screens to share information when I see a common
> issue arising among many of the groups, and do that with the approaches you
> mentioned - a screen projected everywhere and indicating things with the
> mouse pointer. Regarding "technical solution to make 'live drawings' that
> can be shown on all screets"... you'll notice the document camera (Samsung)
> in these photos - this allows you to draw on a piece of paper and have that
> projected where you like.
>
> Hope this is helpful - I'd be happy to discuss more off-list.
>
> Paul
>
> On 10/03/2016 06:21 AM, Lex Nederbragt wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am going to teach a first-year (!) bachelor course ‘introduction to
>> modelling in biosciences’ next September. It will be based on teaching
>> python, using real biological datasets to answer biological questions. It
>> comes out of the ‘Computing in Science Education
>> <http://www.mn.uio.no/english/about/collaboration/cse/>’ project here at the
>> University of Oslo. The course will be a lot of live-coding and (group)
>> coding exercises, rather than lectures. Inspiration is drawn from the
>> Software Carpentry teaching style, as well as the recent report on a similar
>> project in the GeoSciences, see this post on the blog
>> <http://software-carpentry.org/blog/2016/06/teaching-python-to-undergraduate-geoscientists.html>
>> by Christian Jacobs et al.
>>
>> We have been given the opportunity to design and ‘build’ a new classroom,
>> not just for this course, but for other ‘data-lab’ and group-work courses.
>> We already decided on a ‘bring your own device’ approach (no desktop-PCs,
>> students bring their laptop). It has been suggested to design the classroom
>> with round tables for 6-9 students, each table having their own wall-mounted
>> screen/monitor that one of the students can project theirs onto, while also
>> all monitors can mirror the teachers' projection. There would also be a
>> central screen for the teacher, which, in addition to projecting from a
>> teacher’s laptop, can show what is on any of the other screens in the room.
>> Inspiration has been drawn from similar such rooms at the University of
>> Minnesota, see attached pictures.
>>
>> Although I am enthusiastic about the design, my main concern is how to do
>> the live-coding part in such a setting. A large number of students would sit
>> with their back to me. Also, the room will be quite big, with places for
>> 50-60 students. I tend to walk towards the screen a lot, and point out
>> aspects of the code and results, as well as use the whiteboard for drawing
>> illustrations. In our discussions, it has been suggested I could project my
>> laptop to all screens in the room and use the mouse to point to certain
>> things. I’m sure there is a technical solution to make ‘live drawings’ that
>> can be shown on all screens too. I see the point of this solution, but am
>> still a bit hesitant.
>>
>> Do any of you have experience with teaching using live-coding in such a
>> classroom setting, or any advice whether this could in fact be made to work?
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any feedback,
>>
>> Lex Nederbragt
>>
>>
>> <Mail Attachment.jpeg>
>>
>> <Mail Attachment.jpeg>
>>
>>
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> --
> -- ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ --
>
> Paul P.H. Wilson
> Grainger Professor of Nuclear Engineering
> 608-263-0807
> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
> 419 Engineering Research Bldg
> 1500 Engineering Dr, Madison, WI 53706
> calendar: http://go.wisc.edu/pphw-cal <http://go.wisc.edu/pphw-cal>
>
> Computational Nuclear Engineering Research Group
> cnerg.engr.wisc.edu
>
> Faculty Director, Advanced Computing Initiative
> aci.wisc.edu
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