Practical

Personas: an introduction

Ok, break up into groups of 3-4 people.

The first exercise that I want you to do as a group is to develop a persona.

"What's a persona?" I think I hear you ask.

A persona is the representation of the goals and behaviour of a group of hypothetical users.

The theory is that by understanding the needs and abilities of that persona, you can better satisfy the needs and abilities of the larger group.

A good persona should represent a skill set and a behaviour pattern - not a job description.

Software Carpentry make use of persona's: they call them "Learner Profiles".

By example, here's a persona that we developed:

-- Slide -- Name: Associate Professor Glenn Bording

Job title: Senior researcher and lecturer, Radio Astronomy group

Demographics:

• 40 years old
• Programming experience in C and Fortran
• Basic HPC experience
• Prefers to work with physical hardware

-- Slide End --

-- Slide --

Background:

• While preparing a new course for undergraduates, developed a computing challenge to support research using real data
• Realised the BYOD for most students were not powerful enough
• Labs not suitable for task
• Teaching parallel programming and getting accounts for students would be difficult
• Heard about the research cloud

Goal:

• Now keen to learn about NeCTAR Cloud Starter to see if it solves this problem.

-- Slide End --

Once you, as a group, have agreed on your persona, hold up a green sticky note. But you'd better be quick, because I'm giving you only 5 minutes!

For more on personas, there is the wikipedia entry and of course, the book The Inmates are Running the Asylum. Also, the blog posting Perfecting Your Persona's And dont' forget: Software Carpentry's Personas.

Ok: for our purposes today, the persona's that you have developed represent the people that you will be delivering our NeCTAR Cloud Starter training course to.

So as we go through the rest of today I want each group to ask themselves just what it would take to communicate the concepts or activities we are covering to this persona.

If you find you can't do it, then make a note, and we will all discuss it after the next section and see if we can come up with a better approach.

Ask for one or two persona's to be read out

So as you have seen, we have developed a fairly formal course intended to be delivered by a person standing in front of a class.

And we've now done a fairly high level walk through of the lesson plans and their formatting: and of the tool we've developed to support our delivery.

We are now going to split up into groups: each group will choose a lesson to cover. Then the group will work through the lesson plan and associated lesson. We'll take, say, 45 minutes to do this.

Then we will meet up again and try presenting our material for a short period.

As we work through this, I want you all to note any errors or changes that need to be done to the course material.

By raising issues!

-- Slide --

Do you know how to raise an issue on GitHub?

• G = Yes.
• R = No.

-- Slide End --

If there are any No's: well, they need to be shown!

-- Slide --

True or False: Memory records exactly what we experience...

• G = True.
• R = False.

-- Slide End --

A False - Sadly it's been proved that not only is our memory of what we experience highly unreliable, it's even possible to plant false remembered experiences through clever questions.

-- Slide --

BTW - who has seen this:

-- Slide End --

Once you've worked through your chosen lesson and think you are ready to present hold up a Green sticky note!

Remember, the easy thing about software carpentry is that you can present with the lesson right up in front of you. So you don't have to memorize anything.

I've seen people go as far as reading from the lesson.

I try not to: I try to keep the notes to one side, and to glance at them from time to time. I do scribble highlights of important stuff on them so I don't miss it.

The more familiar I am with material the less I need to look at the material.

But I plead guilty to putting extra slides up just to keep me on track...

Take break while people go through the lessons

Improving our teaching

Before we actually try presenting lets talk about improving our teaching.

We all have unconscious nervous habits. I used to rock backward and forwards.

When that was pointed out to me I stopped doing it. Then I started wringing my hands instead.

That was pointed out to. I stopped doing it. Then I started to rock from side to side.

That was pointed out to me...

What I'm trying to say here is that I need constant input on what I'm doing, and how I can improve on it.

When I was first told about my rocking from side to side, I was horrified. I took it personally.

"What did people think of me? I must have looked odd!"

But the more feedback I've got, the more I've learnt to not take it personally: to rather find it interesting.

In a scientific way. I've found that rather than wondering what people think of me, by trying to understand why I'm doing these oddities, the easier it is to tackle them.

The reason I'm giving you this viewpoint is that you should solicit feedback about your teaching if you want to improve. And that it's just once person's point of view. Try not to take it personally. Understand it. If it has merit try to fix it. If it doesn't, note it. It's just how you improve!

And remember, just have we have points for improvement, we also have things we do really well.

So I ask for feedback in order to improve: but I always ask for one point of improvement, and for one thing that I've done really well. That way I keep my equilibrium.

Never teach alone if you can help it! And solicit feedback from your fellow teachers!

So now we are going to take turns in teaching a short extract from each of our chosen lessons.

Work out a suitable time for each person to teach for

At the end of each timed session we the learners will give the teacher a heads up on one thing we thought they can improve on, and the one thing that they do really well. Just for practice.

If there are a large number of teachers, do a random sampling

Finally, before we launch into this practice:

-- Slide --

Nerves!

-- Slide End --

I get stage fright: how do I handle it?

There's a very simple technique.

-- Slide --

"You’re Excited, Not Nervous. You Just Keep Telling Yourself That."

-- Slide End --

You look forward to the event: its an opportunity. Don't fear it!

Ok: let's present!

Now present and do the feedback...