My experiences with the online course:
* Concept map
For my concept map I chose full vs. absolute paths in different OS’s. I chose this because although I understand the concept quite well, I have flubbed up the explanation when teaching. I found the act of making a concept map useful, but in the beginning I had a hard time separating it from the “webbing” exercises I had done for creative writing. Webbing makes you brainstorm ideas and connections between them as a way to spur new links and thoughts. Creating these word “webs” is similar to the creating a concept map, but focuses more on coming up with new ideas rather than the organization of existing ideas.
After getting these ideas straight in my mind, I drew out a couple iterations of the map and felt satisfied that I had covered the topic and its dependencies. However, other students pointed out to me that I didn’t describe how the topics in the concept interacted. It had not occurred to me that the links could be directional or could have descriptions. This will improve my future concept maps. Since learning about concept maps, I’ve found it useful to use them before preparing a lesson or even a presentation so that it is clear what needs to be explained so that I can be understood!
* How learning works
I enjoyed this book and found it easy to read. I found the concepts immediately applicable to my work. For example, when I was correcting the exams for my supervisor’s course I found that most of the students had difficulty drawing contour plots
<figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Example contour map (linked from http://www-pord.ucsd.edu/~sgille/mae127/lecture3/contour_map.jpg)</figcaption></figure>
even though they had seen many contour plots in class (and my supervisor hoped, in life). This immediately reminded me of Chapter 4 where the principle is “To acquire mastery students must acquire component skills, practice integrating them, and know when to apply what they had learned.” For my supervisor and me, it was obvious that the data on this exam question needed to be displayed as a contour plot, but for the students this was unclear. Furthermore, they had never practised drawing contour plots nor had the opportunity to decide which type of graph to use to display data. Knowing how to interpret a graph is a different skill than drawing the appropriate graph-based data. This would not have been so obvious to me before reading parts of “How Learning Works.”
* Short Presentation on concept in Facts and Fallacies
Fact 6 –paraphrased to “It takes time and effort to learn new tools”
Reading this book I learned a lot about management concepts and errors that I had never considered. I had never thought about how teams of programmers work (and probably should be thinking about how teams of scientists work) and how they work with managers who might not be familiar their work. The book was an easy read, however, I felt some of the problems were raised without a hint on how to get around them.
The large emphasis in this book on testing and code reviews made it apparent that my current approach to testing (read: none) is silly and arrogant. This book made it evident to me that I need to start doing code reviews or something of the sort with my minimal python/R code collection.
I chose to do a presentation based on the Fact 6 “New tools and techniques cause an initial loss of productivity / quality” which I paraphrased to read “It takes time and effort to learn new tools.” I chose this because it really resonated with the amount of time I had spent (wasted?) trying to alter the technique I was going to use for one of my PhD projects. In hindsight it makes sense that it takes time to learn something new and to apply it, but before having that spelled out in this book I always imagined that I could quickly pick up something new and use that to my advantage. So planning and thinking a bit more about how to use/adapt new tools is now a critical part of the planning process for me.
The presentation was a challenge since I have never made something that was just for online viewing. I struggled to use images to supplement my text, but I didn’t find that I really succeeded with the text or with the images. Looking back at the slide I feel that the images were a bit disconnected and the text is ok, but doesn’t always flow. I got good feedback on this presentation, but people felt that it was lacking the positive side of the coin where implementing a new tool brings lots of benefits. So true! I think I left this obvious side out because this was how I had always thought about new tools. The decision to use a new tool needs to be a balanced decision.
* Making videos
* Whiteboard video
I made a short video as an introduction to version control. I made a concept map and wrote out the general things I wanted to say. I practised as I would for a talk, but then when I started practising with the whiteboard it took significantly longer than I expected. I forgot how slowly I need to write so that it is not just hieroglyphics appearing on the board.
I used the whiteboard in my office for my video and even though I had my door closed and it was evening I felt really self-conscious performing in front of my laptop’s camera! I was surprised by this. I did 5 retakes of the beginning, then felt the capacity to say “fuck it” to the minor mistakes I made (and also the realization that I could edit out some of the minor ones ) and then finished. I edited some umms and some lengthy pauses I made to shorten the video. I severely underestimated the time this project would take and the stress this presentation would cause me. I have so much respect for people who put together instructional videos. Seriously.
It was really helpful to get feedback from others on my video, my teaching style and the way I organized my short talk. Some of the most valuable comments were related to keeping it clear where I was going with my short talk and then reinforcing this at the end. Also, it was helpful to watch myself on video. I was surprisingly happy with my video; however, I made a lot of weird facial expressions that I had never seen before! I was a bit appalled, so this is something I will keep in mind when I am teaching, but will not worry about too much.
* Screencast
This was another challenging project! Again I severely underestimated the time and difficulty of producing a 3 minute screencast on making local git commits. I began by writing out a script and practised going through it on my computer a few times before committing to recording it. I played it and practised talking over it a few times so that I could get used to any quirks that I had in the screencast and then I started talking. Words are failing me as to why this was so tricky! When I write the above paragraph it seems so simple and straightforward, but when I was in the process of doing this I found it quite painful and difficult. In the end, even though I wasn’t very proud of my screencast, I was proud that I had completed this exercise. </ol>
* Reflection via blog posts
I thought this assignment was really valuable. I feel that as a scientist in biosciences type research I am not often encouraged to reflect about how things went and on my experiences. Taking the time to reflect always uncovers important aspects that otherwise would remain buried.
Online class format:
I have never taken an online course before (although I have been a teaching assistant for one where I watched the message boards for questions. I did not find this very rewarding, possibly also because the course was related to neither my current research nor my background). I thought that the format of having blog posts and conference calls coupled with etherpad use was quite effective. However, contrary to what was suggested during the last call when we discussed why there were so many more comments on the videos than other assignments, I did not feel that a sense of community developed like I think would have in a real-life class (this is not meant to be overly negative, just an observation ). It was interesting to interact with and look at ideas from the interesting assemblage of folks in this class; however, they remained, to me, just online talking heads. This is contrary to the way I feel about people after taking a class in a physical location. Often I won’t know their names as well, but I will have a sense what motivates them to take the class.
Putting what I learned into action:
I am struggling with this. Maybe it will come with more practice, but some days I feel like a hen trying to hatch a nest of eggs where whenever I manage to get 3 eggs covered, 3 other ones slip out from under me. Considering my sloth-like agility in front of a class, I think that the planning aspect is even more important so that I will feel good about the pace, material, and the students’ understanding of the material. 
I need to take more time to plan and practise my teaching sessions. I really like the concept map for uncovering the dependencies of a topic. For me this does not add a lot of material to sessions or classes that I will teach, but rather helps me organize the small, important bits that I need to mention when covering concepts.
Overall:
I enjoyed the class, learned a lot, and will slowly try to incorporate what I’ve learned into my teaching (both formal and informal teaching).