My introduction to Paideia teaching was a grey Thursday in January 2013 — blessed be that first batch of students, for they were patient with the initial out-of-the-gates lecture, which I’ve since refined considerably.
For this year’s Paideia runs (two classes of ~10 people each) I restructured my approach a bit, added the OKCupid data that Albert and I used in the Introduction to R class, and tinkered with content as one does when (a) teaching and (b) being of the “can’t leave well enough alone” school.
In addition to the usual slides (useful visuals and reference), I directed students to our own Stata page for starters, and the truth of the classic xkcd tech support chart for all matters going forward.
Next time around I’ll add a *.do file to work through, since that was a great tool in Albert’s class and removed the complications of having to type in commands. I do believe it’s important to learn by doing, be that at a keyboard or any other workbench, but for the sake of time in the workshop, flow in teaching, and minimizing student frustration — something to try next time.