Software Carpentry and Teaching
By Dr Chris P. Jobling
I’ve watched and found two videos the week by Greg Wilson to have been very instructive. The first, presented and recorded (slides) at PyCon 2014, introduces lessons learned in developing the Software Carpentry (teaching lab skills for scientific computing) movement. This was slightly revised and presented again at SciPy 2014 (the videos have just gone up on YouTube). I’ve embedded the recording of the latter talk here.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e26rp6qPbA?rel=0]Greg’s talks are not really about programming or software carpentry but rather are about teaching and the fact that very little of the large body of research about teaching actually informs what goes on in the class or training room. Ideas and approaches that have been occupying my thoughts recently, like peer instruction, the flipped classroom, collaborative work, inquiry based learning, open educational resources, open access and open source all feature and I may have more to say as I digest the background materials over the summer.
Well worth a look!