instructor-training
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carpentries
Clarify where in an episode to start teaching
How could the content be improved?
Consider adding explanation somewhere unintrusive of where to start teaching in episodes, the difference between questions/objectives and the lesson itself, etc. The challenge would be how to do so without actually making the burden higher for other learners.
Background
There has been some discussion on Slack (trainers channel) of new instructors who had some confusion on what to teach in the episode for their demo:
PERSON 1 I'm having to ask someone to repeat this time for the most unusual reason. The person taught material that was completely unfamiliar to me, and that I couldn't find anywhere in the lesson they were supposed to be teaching from. When I asked them about it (just gently asked them to point me to what they were teaching from, assuming it was my fault I couldn't find them), they confidently pointed me to the top of their episode page. We had a bit of back and forth before I realized that what they were referring to was the Questions section right at the top. Instead of following the lesson as written, they were directly teaching the answer to the first question. They clearly believed that they were following the lesson as written, and that this was the first thing they needed to do.
PERSON 1 I'm just flagging this so that if it comes up again we know it's an ongoing confusion. It may just be one person, but if it isn't I would wonder if there's something in the formatting of the new Workbench episodes that makes it less clear these are goals, not lesson material per se? I think in the old format, they were a different colour to the rest of the lesson?
PERSON 2 Thanks for sharing. PERSON 1 , do feel like this is since the changes to the demos or have you been noticing before that?
PERSON 1 Definitely before. I've only done one demo since the change (the one above), and I don't think this bizarre understanding of the lesson structure can possibly be attributed to the new format.
Additional comments I don't think this is just about the weird one-off described by person 1. There is some general confusion about whether to review previous episodes, talk through learning objectives and questions, or just dive in.
Which part of the content does your suggestion apply to?
https://carpentries.github.io/instructor-training/checkout.html#demonstration
