SEMINARS: A Pedagogical Pattern Language about teaching seminars effectively

Copyright 2000 Astrid Fricke and Markus Völter. Permission is hereby granted to copy and distribute this paper for the purposes of the EuroPLoP '2000 conference. Why and for who did we write this pattern language This pattern language is intended for those instructors in the industry, who are not studied educators. We wrote it especially for those, who feel that something is going wrong with their seminars – perhaps they are even frustrated and do not know what to change or what the reasons could be. This pattern language gives some hints for improving the situation, i.e. how you can run better seminars. After each seminar, whether successful or not, a teacher should do some kind of debrief, asking himself (or herself) the following question: " Did the seminar run as I expected it? " Try to find out about the reasons why it went this way. The following bullets might help if it was not as good as expected: External Factors that are out of my control, such as daily condition of the participants or the teacher, or an unplanned change of the room, a construction site in front of the window creating loud noise, et cetera. What could I have done to react flexibly to such a situation? I think they did not understand the topics. I had the impression that my talking did not reach them. Was it because the seminar was overly complicated for the participants, were the participants less qualified than I expected, or were they simply not interested? The participants were bored all the time, they did not ask questions, and they did not collaborate. Didn't I manage to present the topics in an intrusting and easily understandable way? On the other hand, if the seminar was good, you also should try to find out why and use the successful techniques again in the upcoming seminars. Once again, some points that might help: Was it good because the participants were extraordinarily interested and motivated? Did the size of the group facilitate effective teaching? Was it simply the good atmosphere in the group? In general, teaching is about flexibility. Every teacher should have a set of techniques to run a good seminar. A teacher should collect these effective techniques over time, page 2 of 36 perhaps creating a personal pattern language or finding new patterns to add to this pattern language. This pattern language gives …