First, a bit of a personal update, since I haven’t been posting very regularly…
I’m pretty busy these days (but having more fun than ever!). The Ladies Learning Code team decided last year that we’re going to offer two workshops a month (starting this month), we just launched our first initiative for youth (Girls Learning Code), and we have a few exciting developments just around the corner – all things designed to serve our growing community’s needs, while making our not-for-profit organization more financially sustainable (since, at the moment, we’re totally bootstrapped and it’s looking like we’re going to be that way for a while). In addition, I’m working on an exciting project for the Mozilla Foundation – rallying a community in Toronto around the need to get more kids into programming, hacking and web making.
Hmm…when I write it out like that, it really doesn’t seem like that much…weird.
Anyway, I’m also participating in Greg Wilson‘s P2PU course, “How to Teach Webcraft and Programming to Free-Range Students“. Already I’m reminded of exactly why I dropped out of my Masters program two years ago – I’d rather learn by doing than by reading, at least now that I’m old enough to actually do interesting stuff. Greg’s done a great job putting the course together, though – it seems like it is going to be really interesting. Plus, it’s going to help me to fill one of two major gaps relating to what I’m doing at Ladies Learning Code and for Mozilla: the fact that I don’t have a background in education. (My other gap is that I don’t have a technical background, but I’ll get around to fixing that eventually.)
So, Greg’s first assignment is to read three chapters from the book Making Software (one called “Why is it so hard to learn to program?”, one called “Novice Professionals: Recent Graduates in First Software Engineering Job” and one called “Why Aren’t More Women in Computer Science?”) We’re then supposed to look at this report and this blog post, and talk about how what we’re doing (or what we’re having done to us) compares to these so-called “best practices”.
Here’s how what we do at Ladies Learning Code compares:
1. Space learning over time: We sort of allow for this at Ladies Learning Code, because we host workshops twice a month, and price them accessibly – if someone is interested, they can reasonably attend a Ladies Learning Code workshop every month. And although they’ll cover different topics at each workshop, they will come back to a lot of the same fundamentals, which should be really helpful over time. Something we’re exploring is the idea of multi-session workshops (come once a week for four weeks, for example) as well as the idea of organizing small group tutoring, which will help fill in the gaps between workshops and give participants what they need to move forward with their learning at a pace that they like.
2. Interleave worked example solutions with problem-solving exercises: I’m going to go ahead and say that we do a good job of this. At Ladies Learning Code workshops, we encourage our Lead Instructors to alternate between 15-minute “theory” lessons where they show participants how something works (and answer questions) and 15-30 minute chunks where participants work on implementing something related to what they just learned. For example, a workshop lead might explain colours and HEX codes, and then the participants will spend time changing the colours on their site on their own.
3. Combine graphics with verbal descriptions: We have slides. Participants receive the slides in advance, so they can have them on their own computer screens as well, in case they’d prefer to be the “driver”. And we’ve learned that Lead Instructors need a nice, clear mic and a good set of speakers. People need to be able to hear.
4. Connect and integrate abstract and concrete representations of concepts: At Ladies Learning Code, we don’t aim to teach theory primarily – but we do sprinkle it throughout the workshop, and…
Okay, wait a minute.
I’m going to stop here. I could go on and talk about how we use quizzes (we don’t, except that one time when someone from Automattic gave us a bunch of t-shirts to give away and we did a raise-your-hand quiz for fun), or how we help participants allocate study time efficiently (uhh…we don’t), and how we ask deep, explanatory questions (we do some of this – e.g. “What parts of this website should we highlight on mobile?” – but mostly we don’t), but I won’t.
Here’s my #1 best practice for education and instruction: teach people in a way that inspires passion. Passion is what your learners need in order to want to keep going, and if they keep going, they’ll get there eventually. For adult learners, I believe this is everything.
A couple more best practices?
Teach in a cool, inspiring space. Ladies Learning Code doesn’t hold its workshops at The Centre for Social Innovation by accident. It’s because the space is cool, and people enjoy just being there. One more? Build a community around what you’re teaching. The tools you’ll need for this are accessible and free/cheap – there’s no reason not to do it. And if you’re having trouble bringing a community of people together around what you want to teach, maybe you need to rethink your topic. A vibrant community will be the thing that keeps you and your team going, and pushes you to do more. It will be where your participants get the most value – it will help you attract instructors, volunteers, space and other resources. I would argue that these communities can be built around any worthwhile topic, whether the teaching is taking place in a university or college classroom, at a community centre, or online. Make people feel like part of something, give them ways to connect with each other, encourage them to offer help, and appreciate everyone who does.
Here’s a thought…
Maybe, all this time, we’ve been worrying too much about the wrong things. Sure, we do need some people to think about how to integrate quizzes and how to help participants allocate study time and whether or not we’re providing visual stimulation as well as verbal, but maybe we don’t all have to worry about those things quite as much. I wonder what would happen if we spent more time thinking about the things that are often ignored: things like people and space and community and fun and creativity and a-ha moments. Things like the feeling you get when you walk into the classroom or learning space. Things like what happens during breaks or at recess. Things like turning more strangers into friends, as they’re both learning something new. These things impact the learning experience, and many of them are things that can be managed (at least to come extent). If caring about these things is going to turn a typical learning experience into one that exceeds expectations and – most importantly – inspires passion, then it’s totally worth trying out. Don’t you agree?
Hi!
I really appreciate someone talking about the affective domain of learning.
Often teachers and educational designers forget that students are people, with feelings and emotional states. I feel ‘How’ we teach is just as important as ‘What’ we teach.
Other design fields are getting a clue and the idea of “User Centered Design” and “User experience design” is gaining popularity. It’s spreading to the educational field, as well.
My influences in this area are Kathy Sierra and Roger Schank. Both would agree with your post, I feel.