New approach to missions

[mitramartin]

Hey @thomasfischersm,

@andreimoment, dave and I are working on a new template for missions.

The purpose is to make complex missions more concise and useable in lab settings, while still making detail available for anyone anytime they want to delve in.

The idea is to clearly divide the MOST DISTILLED VERSION of the mission from all the other info. This could be called "Checklist," "Crib Sheet," "Cue Card" or something like that. It would capture important keywords/trigger words for concepts that the buddy must remember to teach. The student and buddy would look at this together when they work on a mission in lab and make sure that the student understands all the parts. Our aim is for this to very brief and concise, 2-4 bullet points with 2-4 words per bullet. (It is not meant to explain to someone who has never learned it how to do it, just remind someone who has learned it what the significant elements are.)

Then, all the other info ("More Details") would be below, to be explored anytime including: Descriptions, Steps, Tips, Variations.

Here is an example: https://github.com/andreimoment/tangomanual/blob/master/missions/6.md

Would be great to hear your thoughts on this! I want to make sure the new revise is really useful to everyone.

Mitra

[andreimoment]

Sounds great, and I think aligned with our initial conversations and the approach of the printed manual with the additional detail available for extended learning.

[thomasfischersm]

Thank you for sharing.

Dave and Andrei probably haven't seen the volumes of e-mails that Mitra and I traded over the format.

The proposed most distilled version seems like a good idea. It's trying to solve the problem that some of the missions can be overwhelmingly large. Especially, when being on the spot in a learning lab to start teaching, some of the mission text can be overwhelming.

The downside of the approach is this: The mission is hard to read, so let's add more text on the top, which makes the overall mission text even larger. I've sent Mitra (and on GitHub) edit suggestions to make missions more concise and readable.

It's kind of like having an unwieldy government form. One way is to add an explanation sheet. The better way is to simplify the form to be more user friendly.

Let's look at the example. This is the checklist:

• Wall: Pivot! before step
• Far/near side invitation
• From Cross(X), solve exit

It's a pretty cryptic checklist. Because of the pyramid structure of students (more first and second timers than students with more repetitions on the mission), a lot of people will look at this for the first time. They can't make sense of it all and might get intimidated.

Terms aren't explained or hinted to anywhere. Farside/nearside invitation doesn't show up in the actual mission.

The checklist combines multiple items. A checklist is good because each bullet point is one thing. However, the checklist puts sometimes two things into the same item: wall demo & pivot before step and from cross & solve exit.

Let's look at the steps and how they could be edited:

• Demonstrate the Forward Ocho at the wall
• Have them copy you
• Explain the parts of the ocho: Extend, Step, Pivot, Extend
• Repeat Forward Ochos in practice hold
• Execute Forward Ochos from the Cross.
• Learn exiting Forward Ochos to a side step

Edits:

• "Have them copy you": All these phrases of have the student repeat now or lead make the mission descriptions twice as voluminous without adding any real meaning. -> Replace both bullet points with: "Practice forward ochos against the wall."

• "Explain the parts of the ocho: Extend, Step, Pivot, Extend": I'd replace "explain" with a verb that also includes practicing the parts together instead of simply talking about it.

If you'd split the checklist into 1 item per list, you'd have 5 bullet points. With the edit, the steps are 5 bullet points. That's the same length.

The remaining difference is that the bullet list uses cryptic short terms that are probably only good to the person who came up with it or the person who taught the mission five or more times.

Summary: My suggestion is: Whenever you feel like you want a most distilled version, the mission steps should be edited instead until that desire goes away.

General points on missions from e-mail threads with Mitra:

1. The missions are written for three reading situations. The organization into sections facilitates that students in each situation can pick out what's important to them:

• Students read through the curriculum before they learn the mission. The purpose of the mission text is to "advertise" to the student the value and fun the mission offers.

• Buddies read the mission on the spot at the start of a learning lab session. Buddies are under pressure to start teaching while the learning student watches them. Clear and quick organization are important. Being able to find the one sentence that says what to do now is important.

• Buddies read the mission in their free time. They have time to absorb subtleties and advanced options for the mission. They read this because they want to be better buddies.

2. Missions should assume the student knows the subject of the mission. Missions shouldn't assume to remember the way the mission teaches. Example: In the ocho mission, the student should be very comfortable with ochos. The student doesn't need to remember the particulars of the mission. Having to remember "6 step count" or "do that thing from mission #7" assume an interest in the missions themselves that is probably not there for most people. Most people's retention is focused on the Tango content, not the mission particulars.

3. There is a temptation for some students to rush through the missions. They see the mission points as things to check off quickly rather than the mission points as a means to learn the Tango material. An example would be that a buddy shows an ocho and let's the learner do an ocho and calls it "mission accomplished." The real sense would be that the buddy is aiming to really teach the learner ochos. The mission points are tools to be used to get there.

The way that missions are written and laid out, they should encourage the latter. That doesn't mean writing long essays, but it means considering if the students get overly focused on checking off some points to quickly move on.

Next step: Send me any mission that you feel really needs a distilled version. I'll edit it until you feel like you don't need the distilled summary anymore. (Caveat, I won't distill it so much that it gets so cryptic that it is only useful to a handful of people.)

[thomasfischersm]

Another thing to look at is the mission design itself. That's probably also a source of the perceived need for a distilled version.

1 One mission is about three songs

One mission lasts about three songs. Each song is a natural unit for a teaching activity. Thus, a typical mission should probably have about three steps. Many missions may have an intro before starting. So, that makes it four steps. A mission with 12 steps will require a lot of thought on the part of the buddy on how to structure the teaching time. That's probably why you wanted a distilled version as well to create the time structure in your mind.

2 Step #1 and #3

Step #3 is to explain the parts of the ocho. That begs for the question what did the student do in step #1 at the wall without knowing what to actually do?

I assume that the answer is in what I've observed in the studio. First, the motion is done on the wall. Then the student does the ocho free standing with a focus on the parts. Finally, the ocho is danced in an embrace. I infer that. The mission doesn't make it clear.

Why not explain the ocho parts while doing it against the wall? That simplifies the teaching. (Of course, the typical pattern as outlined before is nicer, but requires more from the teacher.)

3 Some of the missions can be too ambitious

Another desire for a distilled version is that some missions seem to be written for more than fits in 15 minutes. Thus, they are more verbose than someone would expect to have to read.

With the ocho mission, I've watched them recently. A student with little movement training spent the entire 15 minutes trying to learn how to pivot on his foot (rather unsuccessfully). Getting into the finer points of how to exit the ocho and its variations would be an entire mission on its own. I believe that is why Mitra wants to change the curriculum to include all the insights from running learning labs.

So if the mission uses the earlier suggested edits and is reformulated to three songs, it could look like this:

1. Practice against the wall (focus: extend, step, pivot).
2. Practice in embrace from side step and cross.
3. Learn simple exit with side step.

Do you still feel like you need the summary? Would you agree that this is readable to someone teaching the mission for the first time?

Note: I edited out the repetition of "forward ocho." It makes it verbose to repeat on every line. It's already clear because that the mission title and focus.