A Brief Introduction to the Carpentries Pedagogic Model

Adapted from https://github.com/DanielleQuinn/sc-helper-info all credits go to Danielle Quinn for writing it first. :)

TLDR, check out the diagrame provided in the Summary.

“A great part of the value of a carpentry workshop is the personalised interaction with instructors and helpers in the moment” they need the most help, at the start of the journey. (Adapted from Clara Llebot, The Carpentries discuss).

The Carpentries Pedagogical Model

The Carpentries aim to teach computational competence to learners. We take an applied approach, avoiding the theoretical and general in favor of the practical and specific. By showing learners how to solve specific problems with specific tools and providing hands-on practice, we develop learners’ confidence and lay the foundation for future learning. A critical component of this process is that learners are able to practice what they are learning in real time, get feedback on what they are doing, and then apply those lessons learned to the next step in the learning process. Having learners help each other during the workshops also helps to reinforce concepts taught during the workshops. Our workshops are interactive events – for learners and instructors. We give and receive feedback throughout the course of a workshop. We incorporate assessments within the lesson materials and ask for feedback on sticky notes during lunch breaks and at the end of each day. In this way, instructors can adjust the pace and content of a workshop to meet the needs of the learners in that group, as well as collect feedback that will help us improve lesson materials or methodology for future workshops. Instructors and helpers also provide feedback to learners throughout workshops to get them unstuck or provide a greater depth of understanding about the materials. Interacting in this way with the learners helps us determine how they are doing and figure out what concepts people are having trouble with or where we might be able to move along more quickly.

Code of Conduct

To make clear what is expected, everyone participating in Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry activities is required to conform to our Code of Conduct. This Code of Conduct applies to all spaces managed by Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry including, but not limited to workshops, email lists, online forums and on GitHub. Please review the Code of Conduct to familiarise yourself with it. We value the involvement of everyone and we are committed to creating a friendly and respectful place for learning, teaching and contributing. Knowing that we have rules tells people a great deal about our values and about what kind of learning experience they can expect.

Creating a Positive Learning Environment

Creating a positive learning environment is an important first step to setting the stage for learner success. As instructors, it is crucial to establish the workshop setting as a safe space for learning.

Presenting the instructor as a learner. Admitting that you don’t know everything is part of showing that it is acceptable to make mistakes, and encouraging a growth mindset in learners. Using live coding in teaching concepts is very useful for this reason. It is common to make errors while live coding. When done well, these errors can be very instructive for novice learners.
Establishing norms for interaction. This can be done by having, discussing, and enforcing a Code of Conduct or by having rules of interaction such as ensuring turn taking in discussions, possibly by passing around a talking stick, or by encouraging quieter people to contribute.
Encouraging learners to learn from each other. Acknowledge that some of the material can be difficult and that they will learn more working together. Asking more advanced learners to help beginner learners is a good way to maximize learning for both.
Acknowledging when learners are confused. Understanding why learners are confused provides useful feedback for instructors. We use formative assessments to pinpoint learners’ misunderstandings. Acknowledging that their misunderstandings are valid is also key to encouraging a growth mindset.

Things You Shouldn’t Do in a Workshop

One of our biggest challenges as instructors when teaching a workshop is to not demotivate participants through our words or actions. None of us goes into a workshop with the intention of creating a hostile environment or making the learners hate the tools we’re teaching, but we can all accidentally do that if we don’t pay attention to what we say and how we interact with our learners. We’ll discuss some common demotivators and help you develop strategies for avoiding them.

Criticize certain programs, operating systems, or GUI applications, or learners who use them. (Excel, Windows, etc.)
Talk contemptuously or with scorn about any tool. Regardless of its shortcomings, many of your learners may be using that tool. Convincing someone to change their practices is much harder when they think you disdain them.
Dive into complex or detailed technical discussion with the one or two people in the audience who have advanced knowledge and may not actually need to be at the workshop.
Pretend to know more than you do. People will actually trust you more if you are frank about the limitations of your knowledge, and will be more likely to ask questions and seek help.
Use “just”, “easy”, or other demotivating words. These signal to the learner that the instructor thinks their problem is trivial and by extension that they therefore must be stupid for not being able to figure it out.
Take over the learner’s keyboard. It is rarely a good idea to type anything for your learners and it can be demotivating for the learner because it implies you don’t think they can do it themselves or that you don’t want to wait for them. It also wastes a valuable opportunity for them to develop muscle memory and other skills that are essential for independent work.
Feign surprise. Saying things like “I can’t believe you don’t know X” or “You’ve never heard of Y?” signals to the learner that they do not have some required pre-knowledge of the material you are teaching, that they don’t belong at the workshop, and it may prevent them from asking questions in the future.

Assessments and Feedback

Formative Assessment

To be effective, instructors need feedback on their learners’ progress, and insight into their learners’ mental models. This feedback comes through formative assessments, which takes place during teaching and learning. Its main purpose is to provide guidance to the instructor and the learner about what to focus on. Learners don’t “pass” or “fail” formative assessments. Formative assessments provide feedback to both instructors and learners about learners’ level of understanding of the material. For learners, this feedback can help focus their study efforts. For instructors, it allows them to refocus their instruction to respond to challenges that learners are facing. Our material includes a variety of formative assessments that should be used during lessons. It is up to each instructor which exercises and how many exercises to include.

Sticky Notes

Give each learner two sticky notes of different colours, e.g., green and pink. If someone is following along well, or has completed an exercise, they put the green sticky note on their laptop; if they run into a problem and need help, they put up the pink one and a helper can assist them. This is better than having people raise their hands because:

it’s more discreet (which means they’re more likely to actually do it),
they can keep working while their pink note is raised, and
the instructor can quickly see from the front of the room what state the class is in.

If an instructor notices many pink notes raised, they can stop the lesson and go back to reiterate the points that may have been missed. Sometimes a pink note involves a technical problem that takes a bit more time to solve. To prevent this issue slowing down the whole class too much, you could use the occasion to take the small break you had planned to take a bit later, giving the helper(s) time to fix the problem. Remind learners frequently about using their sticky notes, or they (and you) will forget.

Praise Influences Mindset

The way in which we praise learners has an important impact on their mindset development. Carol Dweck’s research investigated three types of praise: performance-based, effort-based and improvement-based, and looked at how these types of praise influence learner’s mindsets. We’re most used to hearing performance-based praise. This sort of praise focuses on outcomes and implies that the outcome (for example, getting a correct answer) is the most important part of the task. It is often (but not always) combined with language that explicitly or implicitly supports the “intrinsic” model of competence. For example, “You did a great job! You must be very smart.” Effort-based praise focuses on the learner’s hard work. For example, “You did a good job, you must have worked very hard.” Exposing learners frequently to this type of praise helps them to transition from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset by changing their perception of effort. For fixed-mindset people, if something doesn’t come easy to you, it means that you don’t have natural ability and shouldn’t bother. People with a growth mindset are much more likely to persevere in the face of challenge and accomplish their goals. Improvement-based praise is related to praise based on effort, but explicitly draws a learner’s attention to the progress they’ve made. For example, “You’re doing so much better at this than last time, you must have worked very hard.” This helps reinforce a growth-mindset by highlighting our ability to improve with effort.

Experts are frequently so familiar with their subject that they can no longer imagine what it’s like to not see the world that way. This is called expert blind spot and can lead to what’s known as the expertise-reversal effect - experts are often less good at teaching a subject to novices than people with less expertise who still remember what it’s like to have to learn the things. This effect can be overcome with training, but it’s part of the reason world-famous researchers are often poor lecturers. The challenge of identifying and working around expert blind spots is one reason why we welcome instructors who still identify as “novices”! Someone who is still in the process of learning can be a more effective instructor because they are speaking from their own recent experience. In these ways and others, the high connectivity of an expert’s mental model poses challenges while teaching novices. However, that’s not to say that experts can’t be good teachers. Experts can be effective as long as they take the time to identify and correct for their own expert blind spots.

Live Coding

“The live-coding atmosphere is really crucial for learners to feel comfortable asking questions or asking for help.” (Adapted from Hao Ye, The Carpentries discuss).

One of the cornerstones of Software and Data Carpentry teaching is live coding: instructors don’t use slides, but work through the lesson material, typing in the code or instructions, with the workshop participants following along. Live coding fits well into our practice-feedback model by providing learners with continuous opportunities for practice (every time they type in a line of code) and continuous feedback (their code either works or fails with an error message). Some tips for live coding:

Stand up and move around the room if possible. This makes the experience more interactive and less monotonous. Use a microphone if one is available to make it easier for people with hearing difficulties to hear you.
Go slowly. For every command you type, every word of code you write, every menu item or website button you click, say out loud what you are doing while you do it. Then point to the command and its output on the screen and go through it a second time. This slows you down and allows learners to copy what you do, or to catch up. Do not copy-paste code (unless they have already typed that code themselves and they know what and why to copy).
Mirror your learner’s environment. Try to create an environment that is as similar as possible to what your learners have, and avoid using keyboard shortcuts.
Use your screen wisely. Use a big font, and maximize the window. A black font on a white background works better than a light font on a dark background. When the bottom of the projector screen is at the same height, or below, the heads of the learners, people in the back won’t be able to see the lower parts. Draw up the bottom of your window(s) to compensate.
Use illustrations to help learners understand and organize the material. You can also generate the illustrations on the board as you progress through the material. This allows you to build up diagrams, making them increasingly complex in parallel with the material you are teaching. It helps learners understand the material, makes for a more lively workshop and gathers the learners’ attention to you as well.
Turn off notifications on your laptop and phone.
Lesson materials. The core Software and Data Carpentry lessons are developed collaboratively by many instructors and tried and tested at many workshops. If you really want to use something outside of the material, try it out thoroughly before the workshop: run through the lesson as you would during the actual teaching and test the effect of your modification. Some instructors use printouts of the lesson material during teaching. Others use a second device (tablet or laptop) when teaching, on which they can view their notes and the Etherpad session.
Leave no learner behind. Use sticky notes to gauge learners’ progress and understanding.
Embrace mistakes. No matter how well prepared you are, you will make mistakes. This is OK! Use these opportunities to help your learners learn the art of troubleshooting.

Errors as Opportunities

One of the barriers to learning is avoidance of making errors. Errors are associated with negative emotions, which leads to learners being fearful of making them. Error framing encourages learners to understand that making errors provides valuable learning opportunities instead of having negative consequences. Error framing has shown to be useful in learning complex tasks such as programming. Errors are common when live-coding; when you, as an instructor, make an error, it’s important that you cast mistakes as a natural part of learning and take the opportunity to explain what happened and how to fix it.

Summary

For those who like visuals, a great summary provided by Daniela C. Soto @dcsoto_cl Mar 29 , 2019 https://twitter.com/dcsoto_cl/status/1111447971550228480.

Last updated 25 Sept, 2019

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