Round 4.1
I liked the concept map exercise. I realized that if I focus only on the technical details in a lesson without providing a bigger picture, then the students will miss the forest for the trees.
In fact, the chapters we read from How Learning Works were my favorite part of the instructor training. Specifically:
- All students come to the lesson with different background knowledge. This was especially relevant to me since all the boot camps I have taught at have been multi-discipline.
- The strategy of starting with material they are familiar with, and slowly building on new material. They refer to this as bridging. I hope to utilize this to better transition between lessons in a boot camp.
- Students need to apply what they have learned in a different context to build mastery. I hope to use this to design better exercise questions.
Round 4.2
I think assessment questions are important since it would be great to know the participants’ background knowledge, but I also find it frustrating since I’m not sure how effective it is. Especially when it comes to mastery. This is because most complex tools, e.g. the shell or version control, have many different uses and realistically most people are only going to be experts in subsets of the topics. As a concrete example, this recent assessment for the shell from Round 5.2 illustrates my point. To assess expertise in the shell, Preston asked about some key differences between the bash and sh shells since this is part of his expertise. However, other experienced shell users are unsure of the answer since one can become extremely efficient in bash without ever touching sh. So my takeaway from this round was that assessment is difficult! 
Round 4.3
This was my least favorite round (and would rather have had extra time to focus on the videos in the following round). I did not enjoy Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering as much as I had hoped. While there are definitely some good nuggets in there that provide empirical evidence for the best practices we advocate, I didn’t think it was worth the time to read the entire thing and devote a whole round to it. I felt like too much of it was dedicated to concepts that are not as relevant to scientists, e.g. project estimation squabbles between programmers and management.
Round 4.4
Making the videos was extremely time-consuming. Not only was it difficult to think of a nice self-contained lesson that could fit into three minutes, but I also had to wrestle with all the technical details like video editing and the lighting for the whiteboard presentation. However, I did find the experience to be useful (not to mention humbling). It definitely made me appreciate even more all those who recorded screencasts and presentations that I have benefited immensely from in the past. My suggestion is to split the two video lessons over two rounds so that we can focus more on each one (both the lesson and the technical stuff). Also, since it is only one video per round each one could be a few minutes longer.
Round 4.5
Certainly the best way to put what we learned into action was to teach. I enjoyed trying out a concept map for my lesson (I elaborate in my reflection on the teaching experience). This was also really valuable since the feedback was directly for me, instead of the boot camp as a whole like we normally receive.