Creating/organizing presentations and curricula

Use reverse instructional design.

Reverse instructional design means that you work backwards from where you want participants to be after your workshop, and design the content to bring them there. To achieve this, you start from your workshop objectives:

• Decide what constitutes evidence that these objectives have been met (summative assessment).

• Design workshop content to prepare the audience for what they will have to do during the summative assessment.

• Sort the content in order of increasing complexity and then provide the content and motivation they need to close the gap between what they know and what they need to know to complete the summative assessment.

(Credit: Software Carpentry Instructor Training)

Create a shareable slide deck that participants can refer to during and after the workshop.

• Start with a “Workshop POP” slide that introduces the workshop’s purpose, outcome, and process.

  • Reproducibility Workshop POP Example:

    • Purpose: To develop your skills in reproducible organization, documentation, automation, and dissemination of research.

    • Outcome: You feel confident applying relevant resources to guide the sharing of your research.

    • Process: You adapt & apply some of what we discuss today next time your share or publish your research.

• Create a Signpost Slide.

  • Signposts allow participants to understand the greater context of each workshop section.

  • The slide acts as a Table of Contents which tells participants the sections and exercises that will be covered, their timing, as well as the timing for breaks.

  • Between exercises and topics, refer to the signpost and state the connection between the previous learning objective with next learning objective.