Take a subject you’re familiar with, or ideally are an expert in.
Pick a sub-sub skill out of an introductory textbook on the topic. For example, if your subject is biochemistry, you might pick “RNA aptamers.” If the subject is differential equations, you might pick “separable equations.”
Propose a micro-project where a student who had an introductory-level grasp of that topic would find it directly relevant. This micro-project should ideally be safe, cheap, legal/ethical, tractable for a self-studying introductory student, challenging/fun enough to be interesting. It should also be at least thematically related to real-world work in that field, in the way that coding a tic-tac-toe game is thematically related to professional programming work.
Here’s another way of stating the exercise:
Take a subject you’re familiar with, or ideally are an expert in.
Pick a sub-sub skill out of an introductory textbook on the topic. For example, if your subject is biochemistry, you might pick “RNA aptamers.” If the subject is differential equations, you might pick “separable equations.”
Propose a micro-project where a student who had an introductory-level grasp of that topic would find it directly relevant. This micro-project should ideally be safe, cheap, legal/ethical, tractable for a self-studying introductory student, challenging/fun enough to be interesting. It should also be at least thematically related to real-world work in that field, in the way that coding a tic-tac-toe game is thematically related to professional programming work.