Little details—the sorts of things that sink
into the subconscious with practice but are crucial to know
for a beginner—are frequently omitted in casual
descriptions. Often, it can be very difficult to break into
a new procedurally-oriented field of knowledge because so
much background information is required.
I’ve been quite interested in how you can extract this implicit information—and make it explicit so it can be taught.
People who already know how to do something tend to be no longer aware of all the little things they learned as they were developing that capability. They may never have been aware of picking up some of those things in the first place.
One possible strategy would be to pay close attention when you’re teaching a newbie (like in a face-to-face class or tutorial). If they are having trouble or are getting stuck, consider what it is they’re missing. When you’re helping them out, is some part of what you’re showing one of these things you take for granted and don’t explicitly teach?
I also think the simple effort of explicitly paying attention to what you know and how you perform the task would help.
People who already know how to do something tend to be no longer aware of all the little things they learned as they were developing that capability.
On the other hand, people with lots of experience teaching newbies often have quite a detailed knowledge of the most common failure modes for beginners, and can be very useful for precisely this reason. As a second best, people who have only recently learned how to do things often remember their own learning experience sufficiently well to be useful (provided there aren’t so many distinct failure modes that their individual experience is unlikely to be representative).
My advice for cooking is to choose a cookbook intended for beginners that includes a lot more information than just recipes (eg, the Joy of Cooking). This might generalize to other fields. The concept of a recipe is so clear that it’s easy for a beginner to recognize a book doing something else; this may not be so easy in other fields, even if the beginner thinks to look—and people don’t seem to look for cooking instruction beyond recipes.
I’ve been quite interested in how you can extract this implicit information—and make it explicit so it can be taught.
People who already know how to do something tend to be no longer aware of all the little things they learned as they were developing that capability. They may never have been aware of picking up some of those things in the first place.
One possible strategy would be to pay close attention when you’re teaching a newbie (like in a face-to-face class or tutorial). If they are having trouble or are getting stuck, consider what it is they’re missing. When you’re helping them out, is some part of what you’re showing one of these things you take for granted and don’t explicitly teach?
I also think the simple effort of explicitly paying attention to what you know and how you perform the task would help.
On the other hand, people with lots of experience teaching newbies often have quite a detailed knowledge of the most common failure modes for beginners, and can be very useful for precisely this reason. As a second best, people who have only recently learned how to do things often remember their own learning experience sufficiently well to be useful (provided there aren’t so many distinct failure modes that their individual experience is unlikely to be representative).
My advice for cooking is to choose a cookbook intended for beginners that includes a lot more information than just recipes (eg, the Joy of Cooking). This might generalize to other fields. The concept of a recipe is so clear that it’s easy for a beginner to recognize a book doing something else; this may not be so easy in other fields, even if the beginner thinks to look—and people don’t seem to look for cooking instruction beyond recipes.