Andrew L. Van Slaars

I was observing a programming class one time and as the instructor walked the students through an exercise in the book, they hit a snag. Something wasn’t right, the error message was pretty vague and it was about mid way through the class, so the instructor gave the students a break.

I’ve been in situations like this teaching my own classes and sometimes you need a few minutes to work things out. Giving the students a break while troubleshooting allows you to be a little more relaxed than if everybody is watching and impatiently waiting.

The story takes an ugly turn at the end of the break. When the students returned, the instructor moved right into the next exercise. No explanation. No admission of a mistake. Nothing. Eventually, one of the students asked what had happened. He blamed the book’s authors for not testing their code and moved on.

Now, if you don’t see a problem with this, imagine that you are paying tuition for the treatment mentioned above. You just spent two hours on an exercise and saw no reward and learned nothing from it.

If you still don’t see a problem with it, contact me and I’ll tell you where you can mail your tuition checks :). Ok, let’s get back on track…

If you have ever taught a technology class or presented something, you know that things go wrong. Technical difficulties don’t have to be a problem. If handled properly they can be an opportunity.

First, don’t ignore problems when they arise. Embrace problems and turn them into learning opportunities for the students.

If you are confident that you can work through the problem in a reasonable amount of time, fix it in front of the class. This is a great chance for the students to see somebody with experience work through the debugging/problem solving process. Think out loud. Consider asking the students to add their opinions.

Once you have fixed the problem, explain it. Explain what the original problem was. Explain what you did and why you did it. If you can re-create the problem, do so and step through the entire process with the students.

If the “live” approach makes you uncomfortable or you know it will take too much time, park it. Make a note of the problem and tell the class that you will follow up on it.

Follow up on it. If you say you will come back to something, make sure you do it. If at all possible, make it the first thing you cover in your next meeting.

Don’t do any premature finger-pointing. In example cited above, it turns out that the problem was an oversight on the insturctor’s part and not the book or its authors. One of the students figured that out at home and pointed it out to the entire class the following week. Needless to say, the instructor lost a lot of credibility over that.

The bottom line is that you shouldn’t leave your students hanging. Make sure you give them a reasonable explanation for things that don’t go as planned and take every opportunity to turn a problem into a lesson.

Andrew Teaching training