My point is that explaining d2 raid mechanics gave me the chance to iterate on teaching in a targeted, globally understood (so there's a benchmark to compare against), and immediately actionable setting, which allowed me to practice these teaching essentials:
1. Be Concise! More information is not better, in fact it'll just overwhelm your students
1.a. Some details can be skipped entirely, until they become relevant
2. Repeat The Essentials! Repetition helps memorization, and highlights what's important. Some aspects are more important than others.
3. Visual and practical examples a essential! It's almost entirely useless to explain a subject without context or area to experiment in. Polite nods are your best outcome.
3.a. counter-example, the infamous "sudoers" manpage, so bad there's https://m.xkcd.com/1343/ about it. Start with examples, then generalize, not the opposite!
You may notice some contradiction between points 1 and 2. Yes! Finding the right balance is an art.
The challenge for ADHD geeks like me is to avoid the "train-of-thought" infodumping approach, and filtering for what's really the most relevant.
Something i like to do on top of this is separating the goals from the actions. Explain what, not how, we are trying to accomplish at a big picture level. Then, give concise, actionable instructions for how to accomplish the goal.
I very much dislike guides that combine goals and actions in one large, linear instruction set. As soon as there is any deviation, you don't have the high level knowledge to adapt. Sure, I'm supposed to stand on this plate and shoot these 3 things when you say so, but why? Someone died, now the timings are all off. How do I adapt?
1. Be Concise! More information is not better, in fact it'll just overwhelm your students
1.a. Some details can be skipped entirely, until they become relevant
2. Repeat The Essentials! Repetition helps memorization, and highlights what's important. Some aspects are more important than others.
3. Visual and practical examples a essential! It's almost entirely useless to explain a subject without context or area to experiment in. Polite nods are your best outcome.
3.a. counter-example, the infamous "sudoers" manpage, so bad there's https://m.xkcd.com/1343/ about it. Start with examples, then generalize, not the opposite!
You may notice some contradiction between points 1 and 2. Yes! Finding the right balance is an art.
The challenge for ADHD geeks like me is to avoid the "train-of-thought" infodumping approach, and filtering for what's really the most relevant.