Here we go for our first planning session for 2015! The tutorial was basically sprung on me with little prior time to figure things out, so I have a bit less than an hour to prepare my first tutorial for Protactinium. It is time that I am sorely lacking, but I am already sleep-deprived, and getting more sleep will be the most valuable thing for my didactic effectiveness.
My time is so very valuable.
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First, I need to outline the context of the specific tutorial. I should do this every tutorial.
Context:
- It is the first tutorial most students have ever had at university. As a result, they don't know what a good tutorial is like. First impressions are of huge importance, and the very first five words that come out of my mouth will set the tone for the rest of the semester.
- Continuing on, we will get high attendance, because the students are unfamiliar with the tutorial. Because it is unfamiliar, they will be less likely to risk missing it, and try their best to attend the tutorial.
- On the other hand, we may get low attendance because the course outline wasn't set out very clearly. I would put final attendance numbers at approximately 80%. Maybe a bit optimistic.
- The people coming to the workshop will be 9am people. This means they get up earlier than normal people, but we can't extrapolate too much from that. They'll be tired from the wakeup, so I have to keep them engaged throughout, and keep them active. For this one eye contact will be especially important. You can't fall asleep if someone's staring right into your eyes.
Notes from lecturer:
- Set a good tone for your future tutorials: agreed. What exactly is a good tone, though? A positive tone, a productive tone, or an enjoyable tone? I'm leaning towards positive and enjoyable. However, given the decent 80% estimated turnout rate, I would feel safe covering content during my tutorial.
- Discuss how instructions to computers need to be specific: Agreed. I'm not sure about how much depth to go into on this, but it's definitely worth communicating the idea that instructions to computers need to be specific
- Make an icebreaker: Teamwork isn't one of my foremost goals, but it
will be good to introduce the social aspect so that the students enjoy
themselves more. Learning is always more fun if you do it with other people.
- Pair abstraction exercise: Seems like this would actually work as an abstraction exercise.
- Set abstraction homework: I HAVE to give a demonstration of doing this. If I don't embarrass myself with a showy demo, there's no damn way the students will be confident being
- Briefly cover microprocessors (4001), and set them puzzles if they finish (e.g. find absolute value of subtraction in 4003)
- Impress the importance of keeping up to date:
- Get them to go to lab, and pair them up based on seating positions:
- Show them basic linux and openlearning usage:
- Get them to work through exercises and let them know they will be due by Friday:
Notes for following weeks:
- Do a highlight reel of accomplishments made by students on openlearning. Get the positivity flow starting ASAP so students will be more motivated.
Miscellaneous:
- Use Chrome in labs, because Iceweasel doesn't run Flash
- The lab will be short 2 or 3 desks
- 15/22 attendance for a lab held earlier this week. It looks like my estimate of 80% was only a little optimistic.
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I ended my plan here. There was no time to finish it. Here are the brief dot points I made:
People waving hands at train gif
brief marks talk
discuss time talk
cool demos of reachable programs
first tutorial at unsw
9am people
starting at uni - higher value on attendance
some people will be missing - organisation was not the best
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