What Everyone should know about Teaching and Learning

Environmental and meteorological science professionals, data scientists, programmers, and statisticians are constantly learning new and rapidly evolving technologies. They often find themselves in a teaching role as well, whether as mentors, creating tutorials, writing blog posts and documentation, giving talks, or even teaching more formally at universities or boot camps, without being formally prepared for that role. In this talk, we will review practical, evidence-based strategies for organizing and designing your lessons and materials, explaining concepts at the level of your students (beginners, proficient, and experts), using relevant examples, checking for understanding (formative assessment versus summative assessment), and connecting with students (the power of feedback, motivation, active learning vs. passive learning) so that you can be more effective the next time you find yourself in a teaching position. I will illustrate all the strategies and tools with examples of use that I use in the classroom and that are backed by scientific studies.

Resources

• Teaching Tech Together: https://teachtogether.tech/en/index.html

• The Carpentries: https://carpentries.org/

• rOpenSci: https://ropensci.org/

• Article Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom