Instructor Training

Afternoon Wrap-Up

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 5 min
Questions

  • What have we learned?

Objectives

  • Understand overnight homework.

  • Explain pros and cons of ‘one up, one down’ feedback.

As homework overnight, please read our operations guide and the checklists it links to. These recommendations and how-to guides summarize what we have learned (often the hard way) about organizing and running workshops. When you arrive tomorrow, we will ask you to add one question about our operations to a list; we will then do our best to answer all of those questions during the day.

Please also read “Software Carpentry: Lessons Learned”, which summarizes what we have learned over 18 years of teaching basic computing skills to researchers.

End-of-Day Feedback

We frequently ask workshop participants to give us feedback at the end of each day using a technique called “one up, one down”. The instructor asks the learners to alternately give one positive and one negative point about the day, without repeating anything that has already been said. This requirement forces people to say things they otherwise might not: once all the “safe” feedback has been given, participants will start saying what they really think. The instructor writes down the feedback in the etherpad or a text editor, but is not supposed to comment on the feedback while collecting it.

When called upon by the instructor, add one positive or one negative point to the growing list without repeating anything that has already been said.

Key Points