Reflections on SWC
I enjoyed the software carpentry teaching course. Particularly I enjoyed having to more formally think about what worked and didn’t work in teaching; confronting this seems like a good way of improving teaching in general. I didn’t know what to expect coming in — especially focussing on syllabus issues vs teaching style — but I’m glad we focussed on how to teach, rather than what to teach (which really reflects the aim of SWC itself I guess; principles over rote).
Round 4.1: Concept maps
I did this while travelling to see family over Christmas, so it was really crammed into the space that I had. But it was a fun exercise, and I felt I learnt a lot about stopping to think about the logical order to present things in.
Round 4.2: Assessment questions
This was designed as an extension of the concept map round, and it really felt that way. I feel I learnt more about how knowlege and skills are likely to accumulate over time (and the expert blind spot) than about actually assessing people.
Round 4.3: Presentations from Facts and Fallacies
I found the book to be a bit of a slog, primarily because of the writing style. However, there was lots of good stuff in it that applies much more broadly than software engineering (especially estimation: that applies to pretty much any biological project I’ve seen or been involved in). I think that many fields could benefit from an honest appraisal of their accumulated folklore. Making slides was a pain, but they always are. Being compelled to do so made me realise how much I avoid doing so now in both research presentations (series of figures/pictures/photos, perhaps with a title) or teaching (whiteboard/webpage).
Round 4.4: Videos
This took an lot of time, and I found it super awkward. Even with other people in the room, it wasn’t really possible to generate the energy and feeling of a usual teaching environment. I’m honestly not sure how much the two methods (videos/real life) are related. At the same time, it was good to get an outside-in view on style, and my whirlwind hands. But perhaps that could be got by filming part of the next week’s session and reviewing that.
Round 4.5: Reflections on teaching
This was probably my favourite excercise. Because I was going to be teaching anyway, it felt very natural and less forced. The blog post on that is up now. Reflecting on the teaching was useful, and we’ve been trying to do that through the course so far; this was a nice way of more formally capturing that.
Other comments
I thought that the blog worked well as a medium of communication. However, it was often hard to see the posts together (especially when round 5 started and the few posts from round 4 started getting lost in the noise). Keeping track of what was commented on felt harder than necessary too.
The running feeling I have through all my reflections on SWC was “where is the time going to come from”. Teaching is already seen to some degree as a distraction from the “true” job of a post-doc (cranking out papers), and finding the balance was a continued struggle.
It was fun to be able to see the different assignments from previous streams, and see what was common and what had been dropped and replaced. I suspect that there could be something interesting to be learnt from understanding the reasons for changing the course (which were to replace things that didn’t really work, which were a whim, and which were to move with the way a group is naturally going), especially with a group of people interested in developing their own courses.
I was grateful for the flexibility in scheduling, and there is no way I would have completed some of the assignments in time. At the same time, there were a number of times where I wasn’t sure when the next meeting was, complicated by the fact that Australia is usually on a different day to Canada/US. An evolving blog post might be easier than digging through email chains for keeping track of scheduling?