Putting It Together

Overview

Teaching: 5 min
Exercises: 15 min

Questions

• How are the teaching practices we’ve learned used in our workshops?

Objectives

• Organize your knowledge of teaching practices and create a plan for using these practices in a Carpentries workshop.

We’re almost done with our training! At this point, we’ve covered many, many topics around teaching and learning, especially in the context of Carpentries workshops.

Carpentries instructors use a set of teaching techniques based on evidence from educational research. We’ve talked about some of these techniques explicitly (e.g. participatory live coding and formative assessment), and others we’ve been modeling throughout the workshop, without necessarily calling attention to what we were doing. Some of these teaching techniques are implemented at particular points in a workshop, while others are used throughout. Let’s put together everything we’ve learned and organize these practices in terms of what parts of a workshop we need to be conscious of each of these strategies. In other words, let’s put down on paper some of our mental model about teaching and learning, specifically in the Carpentries context.

Picking up the Pieces (optional)

In small groups or on your own, make a list of all the concepts and skills you’ve encountered in this training. Your list can include everything from educational/teaching theories to specific in-classroom practices.

Solution

Compare your list of topics with the list below. What’s missing, either in your list or the one below?

Here is a non-exhaustive list of topics:

• novice, competent practitioner, expert
• mental model
• formative assessment
• blind spot
• short-term and long-term memory
• cognitive load
• motivation
• demotivation
• error-framing
• life-long learning
• feedback
• lesson study
• Code of Conduct
• concept maps
• Multiple Choice Question (MCQ)
• peer instruction
• going slowly
• “just”
• accessibility
• sticky notes
• one-up, one-down
• pre- and post-workshop surveys
• participatory live coding
• introductions

Organize Your Knowledge

Let’s put the pieces together by creating a visual organization of information.
We suggest doing this in two ways:

1. If you are comfortable with / like concept maps, trying integrating all the topics above into a single concept map.
2. Use the provided handout to organize topics. Here are two examples:
   • Handout One (with example content: example)
   • Handout Two

Work on this on your own. There’s no “right answer” – this is about you building up a mental model, moving from “novice” to “competent practitioner”.

Once you’ve organized your thoughts, move to the next exercise.

Parting Thoughts

If you didn’t think about these issues when organizing your topics in the previous exercise, now consider:

1. What is your mental model of teaching?
2. Can you identify why each topic above applies to teaching for the Carpentries?

While there are many ways to think about the practice of teaching, we hope that this training has provided a model of teaching that is learner-centered. In other words, teaching is not really about the teacher, but the learners! The more we know about learner’s backgrounds, motivations, and how they learn (educational psychology) and what interventions can address these issues, the more effective our teaching can be. This also means that our model of teaching doesn’t mean you need to be an expert in the content you’re teaching or that you have to have a certain kind of personality – ANYONE can learn, practice and improve their teaching, as with any skill.

Key Points

• Having a plan makes it easier for you to remember to implement the important teaching practices you’ve learned.