Using !Strike as a tutor of a group of ringers, you can work through most of the exercises above but you may also find the suggestions below helpful. You need to judge how well your students are responding and what is most suitable for them
If you are happy to use your ears to judge what is happening, you can use Student mode and let the students see the screen all the time. If you feel you need to see more than them, especially when there are multiple errors, you can use Tutor mode but then you need to hide the screen from the students during the exercises, either by swivelling the screen using a piece of card so you can see it but the students cannot.
When working with a group, you need to adapt the pace. In the familiarisation exercises, watch the responses of all students to ensure they are all hearing something useful. Those who can't will tend to say nothing, but you do not want to 'lose them' at this stage. Spend extra time focusing specifically on them to help them over the initial fear of the unknown, so they will take part willingly in the rest of the exercise.
People make most progress when they 'succeed' at each step. Once they 'fail' it is easy to drop behind and give up. With students of differing ability, some will always respond more quickly than others, so you need to counter this.
In the Single controlled error task, ask students to say whether they can hear an error, and progressively step it up until all can do so. Only then ask for suggestions of what the error is. You will get different answers, but do not indicate which is right. Keep asking for 'any more offers' until all have expressed an opinion. At all stages, if anyone has any difficulty, offer to make the error bigger. Ideally, all will have offered a view on the error before you reveal the real error. Use your judgement on whether to discuss why people had different answers, (eg 3rd early instead of 2nd late) or to move on to another example.
In the Random errors tasks, encourage everyone to make a contribution, especially the quiet ones, possibly by taking it in turns to suggest one bell to move. (Allow them to 'pass' though, if they really can't make any suggestion.) Ask the students to tell you what changes to make. If you only make single click moves, even for large errors, there will still be something left for the others to detect and try to correct. If the errors are very large you can speed things up by making more than one click at a time.
Generally do just what they say, even if it is wrong. Let them make their own mistakes and discover them afterwards.
After a while, you may want to encourage a methodical approach (eg "Shall we get the hand stroke right first?"), or maybe make leading suggestions (eg "Isn't there something wrong with the lead?").
Finally, you will need to call a halt if the progress slows to the point where they are making little further improvement and in danger of becoming bored. Don't expect the students to take the lead in what they may see as 'giving up'. Explain that they can learn from seeing what they didn't get right, and that there may be more value in making progress with another example than floundering with the one they have already improved to an passable level.
The exercises may lead to discussions, either about why some things are difficult or possibly about some controversial aspect of ringing, (eg, should you adapt your position when someone else makes a mistake). Discussion is healthy, and may stimulate self enquiry and conscientiousness in ringing in general and striking in particular.
Go to: Introduction Operating !Strike Using !Strike by yourself Using !Strike as a tutor
© John Harrison - July 1995, updated August 2014. Website: jaharrison.me.uk