"Preparing to teach" is fairly high-level workshop planning -- we may be missing a basic "how to prepare to the non-live-coding-bits" #99
Replies: 11 comments
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I am so here for this! Thank you for raising this issue! I particularly like how you've framed this issue with these 3 questions, and I will concentrate on 1 and 2. For (1) ie now what? there is an opportunity to hark back to Ep 05 on concept maps, and run an exercise following the discussion for learners to map out (or detail in nested lists) the process of going from page to stage. What about an exercise in creating a timeline to delivery, then translated into a series of calendar slots. Not to be too prescriptive, but enough detail to understand how one might balance teaching prep around existing work and other things like life and sleep. (2) is a great case in point for instructors working out where to insert the exercises in the flow of teaching. Could be a good breakout room group activity using anything that allows for virtual moveable stickies like Google Jamboard (I know it's a terrible name, but a useful tool). How do these ideas sit with you? |
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To move to a brief meta-discussion, I think this is a great time to use reverse instructional design :) And we also need to figure out what our time budget is for this "extra content" because it'll be competing with other content, especially as I know this chapter is in the middle of a revision. @ragamouf Perhaps the place to start is to articulate learning objectives? You seem to have a nuanced understanding of the difficulties here, so it'd be interesting to see what you think good learning objectives would be in this context. @karenword Any thoughts on parameters for exercise design or proposed episode length? (Obviously without obligation to accept, but it would be pointless to do too much work.) |
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Re: reverse instructional design: I would really like to see your workshop with @dvanic to be on offer as a regular bonus module for instructors preparing to teach - especially when it's been ~12 months since their instructor training. Did I zoom out too much? I'm signed up for teaching instructor training in June, so I'm pretty happy to work on this as a way to solve (for myself!) how long to allow for prep for teaching. Am I agreeing to apply reverse instructional design to the reverse instructional design component of the lesson? |
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Nah. Two different challenges. For June, budget 15-20 minutes on "how to prepare an episode" on the first day so they know what they need to do for the second day. (And general public speaking tips). Here we're managing their anxiety over teaching, allowing them to build on that 90 second session early in the piece, and giving those who haven't had public speaking tips... public speaking tips. For meta^3... uh... :: shrug:: And for our workshop as bonus module, ask us for anything* but time. |
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Karen has been working on this episode in the revision. You can see the the work in progress in the data lessons repository. I love the idea of getting these points in the curriculum formally. I often end up answering a lot of trainee questions that address these points during the day 2 question list, after the second teaching practice, and during managing a diverse classroom, but not always. |
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I have no idea how we will fit any of this in... yet. :) I am not sure that I have a very concrete understanding of exactly what you are proposing -- I think there is a lot to unpack in "now what?" My suggestion is that you aim for a very minimalist approach at first. What could you do with one 10 minute activity? Where could we fit in angles of this on other existing content? Revisions for this section are far from finished. I expect to be merging the linked PR soon (in data-lessons) and plan substantial additional work in a next PR. |
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I'm completely braindead right now, so please... edit away. I see two exercises here that flow into each other. The first is the one that I used instead of concept maps: Exercise 3: Decomposition ("un-chunking") In your groups, discuss for 15 minutes:
The objective here is to get them thinking in reverse instructional design before I discussed reverse instructional. The other objective is for them to figure out what specific points they need to hit when teaching to the next exercise -- and to realise that that's a goal. Thinking about the above, especially @ragamouf's point 2 above... (haven't tested this next one as the time for discussing how to prepare an episode is past). This would go before the learning to live code or the first teaching exercise where they're given 5 minutes to prepare without any framing. Exercise: Prepare to teach. Now that you have some ideas about what concepts you want to teach, we need to see what parts of the text you want to make sure you explain during teaching. Remember, we never want to "read" the lessons aloud, but they're an invaluable resource for lesson presentation. We also don't want to use slides during a workshop as switching between slides and live coding increases cognitive load and hides code from the learners. [these last two sentences need work, but I'm just brain-dumping here.] Some people like to highlight phrases they want to work into their teaching. (Image from one of my prep-pages). Other people like to write outlines about what they want to say, so they can focus during teaching on how they want to communicate. Spend time doing the following:
Super rough, but not sure how to stick a "preparing for public speaking" into a 10 minute exercise. Here, we practice task decomposition, narrative flow, reverse instructional design, a kitchen sink, and practice planning a public speaking exercise. The intended audience is a PhD who has never been taught public speaking, and who was always that little bit awkward during presentations. How do we connect that nervous student and show them a) how to prepare for public speaking without just reading, b) implicit reverse instructional design when planning to teach, c) how to make sure they know what phrases they need to hit for the next exercise, and d) how to place exercises in an episode and teach to them? The first exercise will be its own issue once I get a better read of how my workshop takes those ideas going forward. Their feedback was absolutely without comment on the exercise -- which is not normal when dealing with concept maps. @sarahsrking and @megan-guidry might also have useful insights for the first task, but just dropping it in here as it's a prereq for "prepping for public speaking, the exercise" |
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phew! There is a lot packed in here! I think I have a better idea about where you are going, though. Thank you :) The first activity is a fairly neat package that can probably find a home somewhere in the updates. The second item is more complicated, and I think there is a next step in deciding how to structure conversation and consensus around recommendations/ specific learning objectives here. The if-then situations are a challenge. Defining practices runs the risk of being excessively prescriptive. Nevertheless, I agree that we do need to provide more support here. Maybe we bring this to a Trainer meeting, with some structure? |
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Oof - lots to unpack, and I've got more. So I think something that really came up in the Q&A of our instructor training, that is useful as something we actually do in real life is - going from an episode of a lesson as written to something we actually deliver, i.e. the question above: "An episode has all the exercises at the end/interspersed, now what?". This could be a combination of in-class and homework activities. The in-class, to add to Brian:
Also:
This would then build into the (real-world) activity of exercise-picking for an episode, which I would give as homework to be discussed the next day (works better for distributed online than canonical 2 day in person, I know - (meta: probably one to omit from the in-person)). Basically, look at an episode from a lesson (ideally the same one you'll eventually use for the teaching demo). If multiple people are using the same lesson - use the same episode for more teaching gains. Following the mapping procedure like what we used in the session, try to identify which combination of exercises you would use to teach the module, given that you will not be able to use all of them, and you want to achieve learning across all of the episode's key objectives and points. For each exercise on the page, assign it one of four ranks: "definitely skipping", "nice to have", "skip if running out of time", "essential". (IRL we usually end up with only the essentials, but our novice instructors don't know that! - I think it's a key lesson most instructors I've worked with learn the hard way 😿 ). The next day, have learners discuss their choices and logic in groups - hopefully some people working on the same episode will choose different exercises, which will make it even more fun! (and even more realistic). Because (as y'all know) while I love reverse design and other learning theory, it's really only when we use those ideas to reflect on and shape our teaching practice do we truly understand it, and the beauty of the theory shines through... |
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@dvanic I really like those updates to my exercise 1, and I think they might prove the necessary linchpin that would allow this to substitute for concept maps. |
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@brownsarahm Can we drop this a discussion over in trainers? |
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When I was preparing https://carpentries.github.io/instructor-training/15-lesson-study/index.html the tone seems to have moved towards workshop-organisation. Planning what exercises will fit learners, a discussion of learning objectives, and that sort of excellent "lead instructory" stuff.
What I find that we might be missing is pragmatic public-speaking/teaching material for "Well, we've told you to teach an episode, now get to it!" Doing a quick search on "reading" for example, I don't think we emphasise to "don't just read the lesson!" (or ever come out and say it) before they get to a teaching demo.
In the context of reverse instructional design, where we are explaining to support the formatives to support the goals, a discussion of good pedagogic practices in relation to the texts could be very useful. Participants may have little public speaking experience, or may be used to teaching from slides and adding contextualisation of "Well, you have this printed lesson in front of you, how do you go from that to teaching in front of a workshop, and how do you support your co-instructors doing same" could be a useful addition to this lesson. Looking at today's summary of changes (sorry for ducking out early) there does seem to be a deemphasis on the theoretical stuff, so this could be one way to take this page.
Pragmatically, to me, this page needs to answer three questions:
I think we do best at number three right now. Not sure where to go from here though.
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