Software and Data Carpentry instructor training, day 1 of 2

I'm taking part in an instructor training for Software/Data Carpentry held online (using Blue Jeans and Etherpad, as well as additional media, and led by Greg Wilson). Day 1 involved on discussion, theory, and practice focused on educational psychology and instructional design. We practiced tiny lessons, wrote multiple choice questions with distractors, created concept maps, and developed "faded design" programming exercises. So far, I'm impressed with how much I've learned!

Important takeaways (with useful links):

• Novices in a particular area often struggle with knowing where to start/what is important/how to troubleshoot, because they lack a working mental model.
• Taking frequent breaks and avoiding exhaustion/sleep deprivation are important to productivity.
• Also important to learning: frequent, formative feedback.
• Experts in a particular area are often not great at teaching in that area, because they don't need to reason through problems (anymore).
• Especially in programming, having authentic tasks with tangible artifacts (e.g. a plot) will increase learner retention.

A concept map introducing the work that I do!