Hi Philipp On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 7:13 AM, Philipp Bayer <[email protected]> wrote: > > a) the student evaluation on the green/red stickers is rarely helpful in > that regard as it's usually only one sentence, if the stickers are used > at all - today I had a conversation with a supervisor who told me that > one of her students attended one of the recent DC/SWC workshops here and > was very unhappy with the speed of the workshop, but she didn't > communicate that to us at all during the workshop
Besides the sticky notes, student preferences for communication vary between: - Using the chat in the etherpad. - Looking around the room and making eye contact with helpers to "call" them over. - Calling over helpers when they are walking nearby to check-in in person. At some workshops, even with a few reminders for students to use the sticky notes they don't always catch on fully. It really helps to do the walk around the room and check on learner's screens. You as the instructor can't do this except during exercises, but other instructors and helpers in the workshop can - so they are your eyes and ears. Initially one can feel self-conscious doing this because looking over shoulders at laptop screens in other contexts would be unwelcome! But students always like seeing we care that they're not falling behind. It helps to have a classroom with a bit of space between rows of tables and chairs to be able to walk around well. Doing the walk around the room is part of the workshop operations helper checklist (https://software-carpentry.org/checklists/helper/). If many students are falling behind, helpers should let the instructor know either by motioning or going up to them and whispering. Having that quick feedback really helps. Sometimes there are always 2 or 3 students who type very slowly - it wouldn't make sense to slow down the lesson on their account. For students who fall behind, helpers can use the exercise times to get them caught up with the lesson material. For instructors to manage a good pace, saying out aloud each command as the instructor types helps students follow along without having to keep switching from looking at their screen to the instructor's screen and back. If students are only looking at their screen, they can work twice as quickly. Workshop feedback always has notes of "too slow" or "too fast", so the best one can do is strike a balance for the mix of learners present. > we got to wonder how we'd best judge instructors in regards to > whether they're better suited to teach complete beginners, or rough > novices, or advanced learners etc. pp. --snip-- > b) it's hard to be evaluated in that regard from other instructors as > they're usually 'advanced' in their own skills and cannot see anymore > what's important for complete beginners In the instructor training regarding "expert blind spot" ( https://swcarpentry.github.io/instructor-training/02-novice/) there are 3 categories of beginner problems mentioned: - factual errors - broken models - fundamental beliefs How does one overcome trouble spots for a particular lesson? Ideally from listening to other instructors: their analogies and how they introduce concepts. I think the "Extras > Instructor Notes" page in the lesson materials exists to preserve this type of tribal knowledge. To know the trouble spots first hand, some of the past instructor videos ( https://software-carpentry.org/lessons/) have instances of learners asking conceptual questions (e.g. the SciPy videos). Finally, one can spend more time with beginners. One does not have to wait to teach a software carpentry workshop to discover trouble spots. Short lessons at a local programming group can help. Or before a workshop, practicing with even just one friend or student who is new to the material can help one find trouble spots. > c) it's practically impossible for me to self-evaluate whether I'm > actually good at teaching beginners or whether I'm a better 'fit' to > teach advanced students > > I would really love to know where my best 'fit' is in terms of teaching > level, does anyone have a method of (self-)evaluation for this > particular problem? I feel like being "good at teaching beginners" is not a great label to impose on oneself. By learning from where students are having difficulty one can build up a repertoire of helping students make connections to the material. Our duty as SW/DC Carpentry instructors is to become good at teaching beginners and we must help all instructors in our community reach that goal and constantly improve on our processes to make that happen. To come back to your question about assigning teachers: if the written preferences of what lessons the instructors have taught before and would feel comfortable teaching have overlap, then maybe a video conference would help gauge their interest levels and they can pick their lesson than be volunteered for it. That way the teachers judge themselves in this particular instance based on their enthusiasm. > Philipp Bayer Pariksheet --- Pariksheet Nanda PhD Candidate in Genetics and Genomics System Administrator, Storrs HPC Cluster University of Connecticut
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