Creating a positive learning environment
Build the room to grow and learn.
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About these materials
Welcome! This workshop is intended to provide future Open Research instructors practical skills for creating positive and inclusive learning environments Through real-life examples and hands-on exercises, we will explore how instructors’ behaviors, attitudes, communication, and interaction with learners can influence motivation, engagement, and learning success. We will then discover strategies for fostering a growth mindset, practicing active listening, establishing supportive interaction norms, using inclusive language, and taking different learner perspectives into account. This session will provide you with practical foundations for fostering respectful, inclusive, and learner-centered teaching events for the best learning outcomes.
Who are these materials for?
The target audience of this workshop is twofold
Aspiring Open Research Instructors or self-learners with familiarity about key Open Research issues and challenges (e.g., reproducibility and replicability), Open Research tools (e.g., computational reproducibility, preregistration, study planning), basic didactic and lesson conceptualization skills who are interested in building didactic skills to effectively teach Open Research through a combination of theoretical input and practical exercises to become Open Research Instructors. You can follow these materials by chronologically going through the slides and following along with the practical exercises. You go at your own pace and within your own timeframe. Presenter notes will help you to understand and reflect on the content of the materials. Note: Group exercises are not possible in this asynchronous setting.
Future or current Open Research instructors in higher education (e.g., universities, colleges) who are interested or already engaging in bringing Open Research topics closer to your learners and want to sharpen their own didactic skills for effective teaching; or instructors aiming to train others in delivering high-quality Open Research Education. The slides can be directly presented in full screen below, with presenter and instructor notes providing detailed information about the content of the materials and valuable pedagogical tips how to convey the materials to your learners. You can also download the PowerPoint or pdf file corresponding to the materials below and adapt the materials to your learners. Make sure to give appropriate credit to the original authors.
Prerequisites
| Prerequisite | Description | Where to find this |
|---|---|---|
| Basic familiarity with Open Science practices | Examples: R, Quarto, Git, GitHub, preregistration, Open Access etc. | Click here to get familiar with Open Science first |
| Core didactic principles | A firm grasp on important didactic tools and elements | Download Link |
| Knowledge about designing teaching events | Tools and strategies to create a learning experience to convey content and skills | Download Link |
Learning objectives
At the end of this session, aspiring Open Research instructors will …
- Describe the key features of a positive learning environment, including the roles of verbal strategies, body language, growth mindset, interaction norms, perspective-taking, role modelling and inclusive language
- Evaluate how your behavior, language, and attitude influence learner motivation and engagement
- Analyze challenges affecting the learning environment during an Open Research training event and evaluate strategies to address them in different teaching contexts
Export slides
You can export these slides as MS PowerPoint (.pptx) or pdf by clicking below. Note that basic formatting will be applied for the PowerPoint (in progress).
Contributors and licence details
Creator: Von Grebmer zu Wolfsthurn, Sarah (
0000-0002-6413-3895)
Reviewer: Middleton, Sara (0000-0001-5307-8029)
Consultant: Ihle, Malika ( 0000-0002-3242-5981)
This current work by Sarah von Grebmer zu Wolfsthurn, Sara Lil Middleton and Malika Ihle is licensed under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International SA License. It permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.