Advice for teachers
All of our workshops have enough detail such that they can be studied as self-guided workshops by individuals, or used in taught workshops. Some of the workshops are also available as recorded videos.
All of our workshops work well on Windows, Mac or Linux.
When used for workshops
The material works best as three-hour workshops with a 10-15 minute break every hour. The best approach is to walk through the material via live-coding, and then giving time for learners to complete the exercises that are at the bottom of most pages. The answers are linked.
Online courses
We recommend, if teaching online, that you have:
- A lead presenter, who talks through the material and live-codes.
- A second presenter or narrator, who types in chat to highlight key points, answer text-based questions from learners, solve technical issues, or triage questions across to break-out rooms.
- At the start of the beginner courses, helpers that can debug problems in breakout rooms.
The lead and second presenter/narrator may alternate roles through the course.
A lead and narrator together can run classes for about 50-70 learners, assuming either that learners have already installed any pre-requisite software (such as Python) or you have helpers to debug any technical issues. We have taught up to 120 learners at a time, but recommend for this number that you will need at least 1-2 extra helpers who can work with small groups in break out rooms.
Stretch goals
There is in general more material in each course that the average student will get through in the three hours as there is always a wide spread of abilities. Make sure to point out the material will remain online and encourage them to go through it in their own time after the session. We always encourage that learners use their own computers / laptops to run the material so that they can more easily carry on afterwards.