Week 2 Discussion Questions

Overview

Questions

• How can prior knowledge influence a workshop or training experience, and how can we plan to adjust to variation?
• How can the structure of information be explored and made explicit to support learning in a workshop or training event?

Objectives

• Examine relationships between prior knowledge and learning new things.
• Plan how to use pre-assessment data in preparing to teach Instructor Training.
• Evaluate the knowledge-organization strategies in terms of ease of use for new Instructors.
• Apply a concept map to explore concepts of teaching and learning.

Reading

---

How Learning Works:

• Chapter 1 + Appendix A
• Chapter 2 + Appendix B

Discussion Questions

---

1. What stood out to you from this week’s reading? This might be key points, things that made sense in light of your own experience, things you’re not convinced of, or questions that you have from each chapter.

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2

How Learning Works

Chapter 1: How Does Students’ Prior Knowledge Affect Their Learning?

2. Give an example of a time from your experience when a learner’s prior knowledge negatively affected their learning. Why do you think prior knowledge had such an impact in this case? Do you think any of the strategies suggested in this chapter might have helped?

Appendix A

3. Have a look at the pre-assessment survey for Instructor Training events. Can you identify one question that might influence how you approach teaching, depending on the distribution of responses? If you could ask one additional question, what would it be?

Chapter 2: How Does the Way Students Organize Knowledge Affect Their Learning

4. Examine Figure 2.2 (p.50 of the print edition). How do these diagrams relate to knowledge or learner mental models that you are familiar with? Which do you think best represents a learner who has just taken a Carpentries workshop?

5. Take a look at the strategies for ways Instructors can assess and enhance their own knowledge organization at the end of Chapter 2 (p. 59-65). Choose one strategy and think about how an Instructor could apply it when preparing to teach a Carpentries workshop. On a scale from 1-10, how challenging do you think it would be for a new Instructor to use?

Appendix B

6. * (Try not to skip this question) Draft a small concept map (3-5 items with labeled connections) for your own eyes only (not to be shared!) that partially explains one of the following topics:

• Prior knowledge
• Knowledge organization
• Workshop organization

Then, share your experience with the process. Did you learn anything from making this map? How could you organize it differently if you tried it again?

Key Points

• Prior knowledge about teaching strategies varies among trainees in Instructor Training courses. Being attentive to this will improve your impact.
• Pre-assessment surveys are a critical component of all Carpentries workshops. Help us make them useful for you!
• Carpentries curriculum templates provide some support for knowledge organization. Instructors can implement additional strategies to help learners create useful connections.
• Concept maps are a challenging, minimally structured task. They are useful for exploring concepts and relationships prior to teaching because they can make the organization of knowledge more explicit.