Lesson summary:
I taught a 70 minute intro to Python to students who work in science but are complete novices to coding (ie people to whom it was not entirely clear that there are multiple programming languages). This was an interesting challenge because it forced me to think hard about what kind of blind spots I might have. Before I began, I drew out a concept map/outline hybrid that was very helpful for me in identifying jargon and concepts that required prior knowledge. To get them set up, I installed a simple IDE on their computers.
I guided them through a few different independent concepts: variables, input, lists, conditional statements and for loops. Each of these has a short stand-alone exercise for the students to do after I had introduced and demonstrated the concept. I incorporated all of these concepts into a final exercise which involved creating a little interactive script that gave smart-alec answers depending on user input.
Despite my efforts to identify and address any gaps in prior knowlege, I still ran into a blind spot in my very first example, printing “Hello world!”. Using a “print” statement requires an understanding of input and output that not everyone had, and this was something I ended up having to discuss. It was enlightening and served as a good reminder for me to keep it slow.
My thoughts:
Over all, it seemed like it went pretty well. They seemed to be having fun and the exercises were challenging enough that they all had to collaborate a little and make several goes at them, but not so challenging that they got frustrated or gave up. A couple of the students stuck around for a little while because they wanted to see “real” code, so I showed them how to write a simple function and they seemed pretty into it. Unfortunately, none of them are going to encounter this stuff or have a need for it any time soon and I think that that ultimately changes the learning dynamic.
I absolutely agree with a common critique from the students, which was that I needed to provide some sort of outline. About 2 minutes in, I realized that without the birds-eye view I had, they felt like they were jumping all over the place. In the future, I’d be more explicit in transitions and have a diagram of the relationships. Maybe even a concept map! The students were also getting hung up on when to use parentheses vs brackets etc, and in the future, I’d consider making some kind of visual reference so they don’t use up their energy and frustration tolerance on that instead of on the logic.
Students’ feedback:
Good:
- You did a good job of going back over things and making sure I understood them
- You were patient and didn’t move too fast
- Very interesting!
- Open & receptive to questions
- You turned questions from each student into learning opportunities for everyone
Bad:
- More explanation of the purpose behind this, because I had no prior knowledge of anything. Why would you want to use these tools?
- I did not always understand the connections between the topics til the end
- An outline was the main thing that would have helped me because I’m a visual learner and seeing it all fit together would have helped me towards the end when we were working on problems.
- An outline
- I guess if everyone used the same words/phrases when we were working on problems, that would help so issues could be identified faster, instead of people writing different phrases and then you having to figure out what on earth people wrote before you’re able to help them.