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Conducting a 3-hour Cubing Workshop

amateurguy

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Joined
Oct 5, 2007
Messages
88
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Malaysia
Hey guys! I need your feedback and help!

Basically, my school is holding a special workshop day this Thursday, in which students can hold any workshop to teach fellow students and teachers about anything they want (provided it is not academically-related :p). I've then decided to register as a workshop instructor to teach people how to solve the Rubik's Cube.

Then I was told that each workshop would only last for 3 hours.

I have never ever taught someone how to solve the cube in a span of 3 hours before. But I registered anyway because people say that you regret the things you didn't do more than the ones you did. It got approved and now I'm planning the workshop!

So far, here's the details:

Venue: Classroom. I'm expecting a class of 10 to 20 students.

Apparatus: I'm using a webcam to project a live video feed of my cube from a first-person perspective onto a big screen in the classroom. I guess it is easier for students to follow what I am doing and to see what I see when I solve if it's from my POV and yet I can face the class like a normal teacher would. I might not use a slideshow to explain key points though.

Materials: I'm borrowing 3 to 7 cubes (I already have 2) for the purpose of teaching and lending to those who don't own any. And I'm making and printing out one-page 'cheat sheets' to be handed out. They contain algs for solving the 2nd layer and last layer as a reminder and helpful websites for further endeavours.

Time: 8.00 a.m. to 11.30 a.m. Although I said it will be 3 hours, the Management has alloted a small break in between each slot, so basically the workshop is split into two 1.5 hour-'shifts'. (It might change to 11.50 a.m. to 3.30 a.m. But I doubt that has any effect unless lighting on the webcam plays a crucial role?)


I’ve posted up my lesson plan that I’ve made yesterday on Google Docs for you to read if you want to.

It’s REALLY detailed and some parts might not be comprehensible to you, so you don’t have to read through the whole thing. I’m just showing you what I’ve planned. You can skip it if you like.

Here’s my explanation for the plan:

INTRO is just to fill in the time where I solve everyone’s cubes as they would most likely come in scrambled. Should be done in 5 minutes.

KNOWING YOUR CUBE:
I’m basically explaining how stuff moves around the cube. My goal is for students to understand early on how to manipulate the cube in their favour. It’s split up into 3 parts:

1. Centers Rule
Firstly, I explain the Centers Rule by diassembling the cube to prove that the Centers cannot move in relation to each other. As a nice by-product, I can also prove that the cube is made of only 20 unique pieces and not 54 independent stickers. And that each piece can only belong in one place on the cube. (This I believe is one of the more important concepts)

Should be done in 5 minutes.

2. Terminology:
From past experiences of teaching other people one-on-one (e.g. A friend sees me doing it and goes “OMG!11 Lulz! TEACH ME!11!!!1”) I notice that if I start teaching the method straight away without terms or notation, it becomes extremely difficult for me to communicate the method with them as they approach the 2nd layer and especially the last layer. E.g.

Me: Now you’re gonna orient the edges by opening this front door here clockwise, and then the top layer clockwise...
Them: Orient? Edges?

So I’m making sure they know notation and cube jargon well before I continue! Alongside notation I would teach them basic fingertricks for U, U’ and U2 to develop muscle memory early.

Should be optimistically done in 10 minutes.

3. Play Around:
I basically tell them to play around with the cube! I ask them to set their own targets like ‘Move the FR edge to BD’, ‘Move the UBR corner to DFL’ or ‘Move the UF sticker to RD but also maintain the position UL sticker at the end’. Then I’ll go around giving little similar tests one by one.

This I feel is very vital before teaching the method itself. One thing I noticed from experience is that by teaching the method straightaway, they struggle in basic things like making the cross and pairing up to solve the 2nd layer. And by the time they reach the last layer, they give up. I feel that if they are extremely familiar with how they can make the pieces on the cube move wherever and however they want, they can pick up the beginner’s LBL method much faster.

For this reason, I’m willing to spend 30 to 40 minutes of patience on the ‘Knowing Your Cube’ section, with hopes that when I teach them the method, their learning curve is accelerated to the point that they would have solved their first cube within the next 2 hours. Rather than jump straight to the method and spend 5 hours struggling to learn it.

I was thinking of using Chris Hardwick’s 9-core-puzzles method as discussed somewhere on this forum but I’m not really teaching kids: the youngest student would be 13 years old (I’m 16 by the way). And I have to make the most of my 3 hours.


METHOD:

The method I’m teaching is Jasmine Lee’s Beginner Method but with my own variations to (hopefully) ease teaching and learning. I picked this method over others like the Toys R Us / Dan Brown Method because its balance of intuitive-solving, thinking and brainlessness should be suitable. Plus, I used this method when I first learnt how to solve the cube!

The plan is quite straightforward but there are certain key things that I thought would be important to use in the workshop:

1. When explaining that it’s a layer-by-layer method I would sidetrack a bit by explaining the difference between a Layer and a Face, and why you should solve a layer and not a face to obey the Centers Rule.

2. I’m immediately teaching them how to solve the cross on the D face.

3. After familiarising with the cube, I’m hoping to spend only 20 minutes on the Cross and 20 minutes on the Corners.

4. For the 2nd layer, I would show them how the U R U’ R’ U’ F’ U F alg works by pairing up the Corner and its Edge, so that it’s more of understanding than memorising. Should take about 15 minutes.

5. I’m hoping that after the first 1.5 hours are over, students would be able to complete F2L confidently, just in time for the break.

6. My variation of the Niklas in the CP part of the 4LLL is L’ U R U’ L U R U2 to swap the UBR and UFR corner. I prefer this over L U’ R’ U L’ U’ R U2 because I think that it would be easier for students to remember how the F2L is broken and restored if the breaks are facing them rather than away from them.

7. This is how I’m going to do the CO part: I would line up 7 cubes with the 7 different Edge-correct OLL patterns and introduce them to the magical Sune and Anti-Sune, stressing on how it affects the corners by twisting them. Then with the other 5 cubes, I would ask all the students to come to the front to observe and think on how to solve each case using only combinations of these two algs. This is so that I won’t force-feed them information to memorise, and that they would have a sense of victory when they solve their own cases.

8. At first I thought of teaching pure Allan (R2 U F B’ R2 B F’ U R2) and its inverse to solve EP. Plus the [F B’ R2 B F’] can be done with a very cool-looking fingertrick so that I can write the alg as R2 U [cool move] U R2 and R2 U’ [cool move] U’ R2, which is much easier to remember. However, I’m expecting most students to bring super-stiff imitation cubes if they don’t own the more expensive original storeboughts. The fingertrick would be very difficult to execute on them. So, I’m doing the Allan from another angle: B2 U M U2 M’ U B2. Not only does it introduce them to the M move, it’s easy to remember as it is neater and uses a ‘novelty’ move, not to mention being highly symmetrical. Plus, the LL algs would be nicely organised: All EO algs start with F... All CP algs start with L’... All CO cases start with R... and All EP algs start with B2...

9. I hope to get LL done in 1 hour.

10. After each step (Cross, Corners, 2nd Layer, EO, CP, CO, EP) I'll let them play around for about 5 minutes or so, scramble and solve until the last learnt step. Just to make sure they don't have to absorb too much at one go, and also to reinforce previous ideas.


EXTENSION:

This is just if I have extra time on my hands. I would briefly touch on where to go from there, such as saving moves using the keyhole method and then, when they feel brave enough, advancing into Fridrich pairing.


ASSESSMENT:

Oh, and all workshops must include an assessment period to ‘test students whether they have picked up learning objectives’. This means my students have to have their first cube solved from scratch within 2.5 hours max. So that the last half-hour would be my ‘assessment’.

I’m thinking of lining up students 5 to 10 at a time on a row of tables to solve their cubes simultaneously. So, it’s like a race really. It’s sad I don’t have stackmats or else they can time themselves!

As an instructor, I have to set a ‘passing mark’ for my assessment. This means my students can actually ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ my workshop... So far, my passing mark is ‘Solve the cube independently’ or ‘Solve the cube in under 10 minutes with the assistance of the ‘cheat sheet’’. The latter is if I have too little time left for them to practice. If I somehow have a lot of time for them to practice, I’d put my passing mark as ‘Solve the cube independently in under 10 minutes’.

Would that be putting overly high expectations?

In fact, overall, am I being too optimistic about the program?

Any flaws to be corrected or additions to be made to the plan?

Tips, advice, and constructive comments are very much welcome from you. And feel free to ask me any questions if I was not clear on some parts in my explanation or lesson plan. I really want this workshop to be a success and I need your help!

(P.S. I’d be very pleased if people who have teaching experience like Chris Hardwick or Mike Hughey would shed some light on this!)
 
Last edited:

Karthik

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Hi,
Nice to know that you are conducting a workshop. Me and Shanmukh(siva.shanmukh on the forum) had conducted a workshop during our annual techfest, Shaastra.
We had done something similar as you. We had a solution prepared with the most intuitive algs
Here is what we used : http://cubaholic.110mb.com/beginner/solution.html
We used a projector to project a virtual cube(Gabbasoft) and explain the algorithms.
To get people involved/motivated, I started off by doing some speedsolves and BLD solves.
Also there were a few of my friends volunteering and going around the room to help people when they were stuck or messed up an algorithm half way through.
There were more than 200+ people and ours was a 5 hour workshop and we hardly got 40%-50% of the people to be able to completely solve it. So I think you must reconsider how you are going to teach in 3 hours.But since you have only about 20 people in your workshop, it must not be all that difficult.
Also cheat-sheets and cubes for everybody is really a must.
Good luck with the workshop!
 

amateurguy

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Joined
Oct 5, 2007
Messages
88
Location
Malaysia
Thanks!

Mmm... Gabbasoft doesn't work on Macs, but I prefer to use a live cam of my hands on my cube so that my students would 'mimic' my finger-movements and see how I personally execute the algs.

I'm pretty sure that people would request me to do speedsolves and BLD solves even without me planning to do them!

And I'm the only instructor of this workshop so I handle everything. Haha. But if a student picks up a step faster than the rest, I would encourage him or her to help the rest. So, it's a very interactive workshop.

Oh, and the only difference between the method you posted and the Toys R Us method is that you solve the cross on the D face! I expect some of my students would already have the leaflet and are just joining my workshop to learn a way to get faster. Anyway, I prefer the current method I'm using because there's fun in thinking a bit rather than stuff like repeating D' R' D R several times. But thanks anyway!
 
Last edited:

siva.shanmukh

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8. At first I thought of teaching pure Allan (R2 U F B’ U2 B F’ U R2) and its inverse to solve EP. Plus the [F B’ U2 B F’] can be done with a very cool-looking fingertrick so that I can write the alg as R2 U [cool move] U R2 and R2 U’ [cool move] U’ R2, which is much easier to remember. However, I’m expecting most students to bring super-stiff imitation cubes if they don’t own the more expensive original storeboughts. The fingertrick would be very difficult to execute on them. So, I’m doing the Allan from another angle: B2 U M U2 M’ U B2. Not only does it introduce them to the M move, it’s easy to remember as it is neater and uses a ‘novelty’ move, not to mention being highly symmetrical. Plus, the LL algs would be nicely organised: All EO algs start with F... All CP algs start with L’... All CO cases start with R... and All EP algs start with B2...

In the above line, what does R2 U F B’ U2 B F’ U R2 do? I think it must be R2 U F B' R2 B F' U R2

I finally got time to read through your entire plan. Its good but as Karthik time is really a bottle neck. It took more than 1 hour for most of the people to figure out how to do the cross. And then it took about 30 minutes for corners and 50 minutes for edges. These took the major chunk of our times. The part after this becomes little easier for them then on as they get used to reading through the algorithms and executing wiithout mistakes.

Considering the fact that you are going to teach only about 12 people, the times should be little smaller. When I taught less number of people (like 5-6 at a time), I use a different strategy.

I start with something similar to 1st and 2nd steps of yours ask them to solve a face and make them understand why they have to solve layers and not faces and then the second layer. Now I ask them to do this part on their own, twice or thrice(This builds up the comfort of turning the cube).

Going to LL (I change the way I teach LL depending on the level of understanding they gain).

For people who seem to do well with following the algs and little bad with how the pieces are moving around, I use the method mentioned on Karthik's page. If they seem good at picking up how pieces are moving around, I teach, I help them make their own algorithm to cycle 3 edges/corners(commutators of course).

Corners:
A three corner cycle like A B A' B'
With LL facing F, L or R A will be a first layer, corner insertion algorithm and B will be a D or D'.
I do this only once I am sure that they picked the rest very well.(I have never taught this way to more than 3 people at a time)

Edges:
I explain them how M' R2 M R2 works and suggest them to figure setup move X (Alg would become: X M' R2 M R2 X') and they would be able to solve it on their own then.

If i find that he/she lies between the understanding type and the making alg type, then I would jus give a 3 cycle corner move (R U' L' U R' U' L U) and try to tech edge commutators.

These are the ways I follow. Just explained everything so that you understand how long it takes for a part depending on the understanding levels of the audience.
 

amateurguy

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I think it must be R2 U F B' R2 B F' U R2

You're right! My mistake. I've corrected it.

You have a point about how the teaching method should be moulded to the student's understanding level. But from my school demographic, they are most probably the follows-instructions-nicely-without-minding-little-challenges type rather than the think-furiously-hard-and-do-everything-myself type. Considering I myself am inexperienced in commutators, I prefer teaching a more formulaic solution.

And hopefully, the concept of building the cross starts (and is quickly learnt thereafter) somewhat in the Play Around section of the workshop where students attempt to move stuff around their cubes. But it's still a scary thought to think that your students took 1 hour to learn the cross when I expect to get the 1st layer done in that same time!
 

shelley

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In my experience, two hours is enough to get a group of high school students all the way through the cube. They won't all understand it necessarily, and they won't be able to do it on their own immediately, but let them take notes and copy down last layer algs and they'll learn to solve on their own shortly.

It helps if you have some people to help you though. People will ask you the same questions over and over so be prepared to repeat your explanations a lot.
 

amateurguy

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Oct 5, 2007
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So two hours really is possible! That's good. And I'm pretty prepared to repeat explanations. Although I'm a lone instructor, so far there are only 7 to 10 people who have registered for the workshop, so I guess it's a good student-teacher ratio.

Oh and I've already designed my own handout yesterday. I particularly prefer mine because I fit everything in one simple page!
 

shelley

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Yeah, I'm sure you'll be able to manage 10 people on your own. When you're teaching a class of 50 it helps to have teaching assistants.
 
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