First of all, I gained a lot from this. First and foremost, I liked that I got a chance to really focus on my teaching. In my environment, people seem to have the attitude that as long as you know the subject, you should automatically be able to teach it. Seeing and talking to others during these weeks have made me aware of how I teach and given me ideas of how I can improve. One of the big things for me was to learn about cognitive load and how that affects learning. I will now try at any given moment to be more aware of what the learner is supposed to gain from what I am teaching them, and also to keep the number of things that they should learn down to avoid confusion. It is very easy to believe that what I am teaching is easier than it really is, and to try to mix in several elements to keep things “interesting”, thus ending up with overloading and confusing people.
I also had several Duh! moments relating to the “beginner´s mind” concept. It is very easy to forget how much context that I possess that the students may not have. I am now more aware of that I should make sure what I am teaching builds on something that they already know and not inadvertently drag in other elements. However, putting these things into practice will be a challenge because it is difficult to actually see what somebody who don´t know the material will get out of what I tell them. In that respect, I will be liberally using the concept map idea. I found that it both helped clarify my own ideas about what I am trying to teach, while simultaneously also helping me to define what I am trying to teach. Likewise, making the multiple choice questions was also a very illuminating exercise. During that exercise, I realized that I had to flip the problem to be able to make questions — I had to figure out what the questions should be able to diagnose before I was able to make the questions. That really brought it home for me to what extent I need to focus on the (few) key elements that I am at any one time trying to teach.
What could have been better? I have very little to complain about when it comes to the workhops. However, what I have been missing is a guided tour of the Software Carpentry material. I know there is quite a bit on the website, and also in the git repository, but it is difficult to know where to start.