How to teach a subject you know little about?

You might be tempted to say: “Don’t do this ever!”

But in IT, someone has to be the first to explore new technologies. As a teacher, you will find yourself close to the frontier sometimes. And although you cannot know everything, you might be the best person available.

You can approaching unfamiliar subjects in two ways: a slow and a fast one.

The slow way

Generally, it is a good thing if someone makes you learn something new things (or even pays for it). But learning new subjects takes time.

  • read a book

  • try the technology youself, following through the chapters

  • use the chapter titles to develop a structure for your course

  • skip all the advanced things

  • proceed systematically in a step-by-step manner

  • think heavily of practical questions that you would have. Write them down, research the answers and use them in your course.

The fast way

If you get a question like: “Can we do X tomorrow?”. It can be done, but it requires a bit of boldness and solid facilitation skills.

  • admit that you know nothing

  • invite the class to explore this topic together

  • in that moment, your job changes from structuring the content to structuring the process

A general strategy is to conduct a “problem-solving-cycle”, a facilitation technique that will take about 3-4 hours. In a nutshell, it consists of the following steps:

  1. Do a solid warmup

  2. Ask for previous experience and expectations

  3. Collect questions from all participants

  4. Prioritize the questions together

  5. Split into groups that research one of these questions for some time

  6. Each group presents results

  7. Reflect on your progress and collect feedback

Your job is to choose aproppriate methods for each of these steps.

Joining your participants in their learning path could be one of your exciting lessons.