Reflection 2024-04-17¶
There were 12 learners in the classroom. I asked Meike to observe.
Usually, when doing a Prior, I've done this in an online setting. Usually, what I do, is stop sharing the screen and open up the 'For teachers' section with the Prior in the course material. In a regular classroom setting, however, this could not be done elegantly. Next classroom setting, print out the Priors.
- [ ] In a classroom setting, print out the Priors
It felt that the learners were twice as fast. In hindsight, they went through the schedule indeed a bit faster: instead of taking (50 + 30 =) 80 mins, they went through it in (50 + 15 =) 65 mins. This means they were about ((65 - 80) / 80 = −0.1875 =) 20% faster.
This is the schedule, with the changes indicated:
| Time | Description |
|---|---|
| 9:00 | Intro to Mermaid |
| 9:05 -> 9:10 | Your first Mermaid experience |
| 9:25 | Mermaid terminology |
| 10:00 -> 9:45 | Publishing your graphs or Improving the layout of your graphs |
| 9:50 | Break |
| 10:00 | Publishing your graphs or Improving the layout of your graphs |
| 10:30 -> 10:15 | End |
Due to the higher pace, me and Meike decided to have a break 15 minutes earlier, so that the next lecturer could also start 15 minutes earlier. I think this was a good choice.
I was able to see the progress of the learners well and had short one-on-ones with around two-thirds of them.
There were some things in the exercises that could be improved (thanks to Sara, from Belgium, for pointing that out).
- [x] Improve exercises
A weakness was that I did not share the learning objectives at the start of each session. This is because these boxes were folded.
- [x] Unfold boxes
Summarizing the lesson, I think it was a relaxed, lightweight session that reached its teaching goals, albeit executed a bit sloppily.
Reading Meike's observations, I see that indeed the schedule is indeed as shown above. Monologues:
- 9:00-9:09: 9 minutes
- 9:23-9:27: 4 minutes
- 9:45-9:50: 5 minutes
- 10:00-10:01: 1 minutes
- 10:13-10:15: 2 minutes
I talked (9 + 4 + 5 + 1 + 2 =) 21 minutes of 65 minutes, which is around 32% of the time. I feel this is too much. I think this can be explained by having a better rule what yes/no to discuss.
- [ ] Prepare what yes/no to discuss
Now the anonymous feedback is in, with two responses:
Could have been worse :-) ! And
I loved it! Fun and easy to follow! I like the way you teach, but sometimes it was a bit flickering while walking back and forth..
In retrosepctive, I would have appreciated some more time on showing details in the process of constructing the mindmaps/flowcharts..
Keep it up!
I think this is great feedback! Indeed, I should have been doing a stronger Feedback phase and demo live how to build these. I'll try to do so next time.
- [ ] Show the process of constructing the mindmaps/flowcharts
Also, the 'a bit flickering while walking back and forth' is correct: my laptop was far away from the screen, so I had to walk more than I'd have liked too. I could not reasonably have fixed this, yet I enjoy such an observant learner!