Week 7 Discussion Questions

Overview

Teaching: 0 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

Objectives

• Propose approaches to improve the use and usefulness of Carpentries feedback surveys.

• Suggest ways to prepare trainees to make mistakes in managing learner motivation.

• Apply concepts related to motivation to the process of learning to teach.

• Assess completeness and core content of the new episode on Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility.

• Propose approaches to support trainees in improving the quality of their feedback.

Reading:

Building Skill With Feedback
Motivation and Demotivation
Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility
Teaching is a Skill
Wrap-up and Homework
Welcome Back

Discussion Questions

1. What stood out to you from this week’s reading? Think of things that made sense in light of your own experience, things you’re not convinced of, or questions that you have.

Building Skill With Feedback

2. Reponses to Carpentries pre- and post- surveys are intended to be useful to Instructors, Hosts, and The Carpentries. In particular, we aspire to using data from these surveys to improve understanding of the functionality of our programming as well as promote our successes and needs to funders. This is critical to the sustainability of The Carpentries overall. However, this requires that surveys be systematically administered. Nobody likes surveys, and it’s not fun to hound people to take them, either. What can we do to persuade Instructors to make more consistent use of these important assessment tools? (Responses might include ways to make the surveys themselves more useful.)

Motivation and Demotivation

3. Avoiding demotivating learners is at least as important as motivating them, but there are many demotivating “traps” an instructor can fall into even when they are aware of the problem. What strategies can we give our instructors for recovering from these slip-ups?

4. How might the concepts taught in this lesson apply to the process of learning to becoming a better teacher?

Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

5. This is a new episode and will continue to develop over time. What content do you think might be missing that would be important for our Instructors to understand in the context of Carpentries workshops?

Teaching is a Skill

6. When trainees give feedback, especially when giving feedback to themselves, they are VERY likely to comment on the number of times they said “um” or “uh” during their practice presentation. How would you go about helping them to level up their feedback to address more impactful features?

Key Points

• Convincing trainees to collect feedback is a fundamental goal. Teaching them to use it is the next step.

• Developing awareness of demotivating scenarios is a fundamental goal. Teaching trainees to cope with them is the next step.

• Many trainees may have a growth mindset with regard to computational skills and a fixed mindset with regard to teaching skills.

• New Instructors should start their improvement process with ‘low hanging fruit’ – teaching techniques they can easily adopt. For some, this might center on presentation style while for others, it might have more to do with classroom mechanics. Focusing on one thing at a time to improve on can help people evaluate and prioritize their goals as they progress.