Skip to content

Reflection

Before teaching

While preparing, I already concluded to call this a workshop.

  • [ ] Call this a workshop

Besides that, one weakness I will discover later, is that originally I started with the book, then moved to the general workflow overview. I reversed that. This had two negative consequences:

  • The learners were more ill-prepared to do the exercises: they had not created an R script yet, etc
  • That session was not updated to reflect the (lower) starting point

During teaching

During teaching I spoke to the course coordinator. She stated that the purpose of this workshop is not only to create a plot, but also to discover the possibilities of R and ggplot2. At that time, I said we'll talk about it later.

At 9:10 I found out that all learners had already installed RStudio and the tidyverse packages. I decided to skip that section and I am happy with that decision.

After teaching

I have mixed feelings about how the teaching went.

What I liked is how most learners started exploring and working as intended. Some were done early and finished early: that is great, so that I can give more time to the beginners.

Also, I have spoken to all learners and helped them at each level. Some learners already have the higher-level questions, such as how to clearly communicate a message using a plot.

I was unhappy with the session to create a data file: this had too little detail for beginners. I should show how to do this in RStudio. Because of the lack of guidance, people used Excel, which gave new problems: in Swedish Excel, exporting to a CSV results in values separated by a semicolon (i.e. not a comma)! This needlessly slowed around 4 learners down.

  • [x] Describe in more detail how to create a data file
  • [x] Describe in more detail how to create an R script

Also, to most learners it was unclear what the goal was of this session.

  • [x] Describe in more detail the goal of this session
  • [ ] Consider to demo this section

Besides that, all seem to be in good shape, including the beginners.

I ask, however, about a learner that left a group. I wrote him/her a personal message on Slack:

Hi [name],

I heard you left, because you needed more beginner help.

I understand the need and I do this in all breakout rooms. I am unsure how the thought process went, but here again: my workshop is there too for complete beginners. You are not the only one :+1:

We can have a 1-on-1 today or under my workshop time between 9:00-12:00. Would be fun to have you back!

Cheers, Richel

I shared this with the course coordinator, to both inform and to share my unhappiness with this.

I did see this learner was among the six that joined at 10:15, not those at the start at 9:00. For that later group, I rushed through the introduction and I can imagine some of my message is lost, such as the 'this course is for beginners too' message.

  • [x] Make it clearer that this workshop is for beginners

I expected the mismatch between the bigger courses' schedule and my workshop's setup to give problems and this is an unfortunate example of that. This is something that can be fixed:

  • [ ] Ask the course leader to announce my first day as one big block

About the learner again: I was contacted by him/her

Hi Richel, Thank you for reaching out and for the invitation. I think I need a bit more time to work on my own and get familiar with the basics at my own pace. For now, I'll continue practicing independently, but I really appreciate your offer of support. If I find that I need additional help or guidance, I'll definitely get back to you. Thanks again, and I hope to join one of your sessions in the future. Cheers,

Where I replied with;

Great! Looking forward to see your achievements :slightly_smiling_face: !

And I'd be happy to help: there are so stupid questions for me :+1:

So, that ended semi-alright, but it would have been better prevented.

About the course goals again, now it is this:

Create a plot needed for the Scientific Illustration and Data Visualisation course.

I tried to add what the course coordinator wants:

See the possibility that R and ggplot2 offer

However, this does feel weird: why would a Scientific Illustration and Data Visualisation course want this? I need the course leader's ideas to help me understand.

  • [ ] Discuss with the course leader about my workshop's goals

I can already prep this for tomorrow:

I have just checked the evaluation results. There are non yet. I understand that: those that left earlier did not really need me. Tomorrow, there will be proper time for this :+1: