Lesson plan 2023-09-11 for Richel's lessons¶
- Date: 2023-09-11
- Course: Basic Bianca
- Teacher: Richel
- Reflection
As preparation, with the team, we discussed the schedule, as well as the goals:
| Time | Topic | Goals |
|---|---|---|
| 9:00 | Intro, syllabus | Students understand how the course is taught, know to stay or go to breakout room |
| 9:15 | Login, SSH, ThinLinc, login node | having logged in with SSH and ThinLinc, experience the difference between SSH and ThinLinc, first feel of a login node |
| . | Parallel session for active users | Marcus: answer more advanced questions (experimental) |
| 9:45 | Break | Break, evaluate with helpers |
| 10:00 | Command-line intro | Being able to view/create/move/delete files, create an executable bash script |
| 10:25 | Module system | Being able to search/load/unload modules, create an executable bash script that uses a module, without SLURM |
| 10:45 | Break | Break, evaluate with helpers, transfer to Pavlin |
| 15.35 | Summary | Repeat, be able to improve the course next year |
Prerequisites:
- Zoom room has break-out rooms
- Students can show their screen in the Zoom rooms
- Students should be able to do the course without in-person help
Teacher goals:
- Enjoy teaching an online course, by (1) engaging the students by being interactive, (2) making it a social experience for the students (3) have fun
Detailed schedule¶
Before first hour¶
| When | What |
|---|---|
| 8:15 | Pre-meeting Eli |
| 8:30 | Sysadmin comes in, will get own breakout room |
First hour: login¶
| When | What |
|---|---|
| 8:45 | Welcome students |
| 9:00 | How to the course works. Monologue. A: interactive, camera's on, achieve things in small and changing groups of 2-3, experienced students help out, please work ahead or chat after an assignment |
| 9:05 | Check pre-knowledge: Other clusters? Linux? Command-line? Ask randomly, all should speak |
| 9:10 | Why important? Ask randomly. A: to be able to do the calculations needed for research using sensitive data |
| 9:15 | Show exercises and solutions at here |
| 9:17 | Ask for experts to help out by using a 'Yes' |
| 9:18 | Procedure: try to solve together, when done either work ahead, chat in breakout room, chat in main room, or take an early break |
| 9:20 | Group expert with non-expert, optimize for diversity, send them away directly |
| 9:45 | Break |
Second hour: command-line and modules¶
| When | What |
|---|---|
| 10:00 | Check pre-knowledge: Command-line? Terminal? Ask randomly, most should speak |
| 10:05 | Why important? Ask randomly. A: to be able to work with files, create and start scripts |
| 10:10 | Show exercises and solutions at here |
| 10:12 | Ask for experts to help out by using a 'Yes' |
| 10:14 | Procedure: try to solve together, when done either work ahead, chat in breakout room, chat in main room, or take an early break |
| 10:24 | Call students back |
| 10:25 | Check pre-knowledge: Module system? Ask randomly, at least two should speak |
| 10:30 | Why important? Ask randomly. A: to be able to work undisturbed on the same computer |
| 10:32 | Show exercises and solutions at here |
| 10:34 | Continue working in break-out rooms |
| 10:45 | Break |
Instructions for anonymous evaluation, Jon¶
- Discuss: Why anonymous evaluation? Because it helps the teachers and course improve
- Discuss: Why anonymous? Because it makes the evaluation more honest
- Discuss: Why by Jon? Because the students don't know him :-)
- Discuss procedure:
- Students get URL to the Google Form
- Students are divided into groups of 2 (maybe 1 group of 3) in breakout rooms, where they fill in the Form together. Goal is to make the text less personal, as it has been worked on together. After sending in, students can say bye in the main room or leave directly
- The results will be published uncensored on this website as far as this is legal (e.g. phone number and email addresses will be censored). Goal is to show our students we care about what they think and we teachers are confident we can improve
- Then actually do it :-)
Instructions for observer, Eli¶
- Camera on, like all students
- Keep regular Zoom name, no need to add
[observer]or something - You will be introduced by the students, so that they know who you are would you like to go into a breakout room
- Feel free to jump in and out of breakout rooms when you feel like it; no need to ask first
Observation questions:
- Most students will expect a classic lecture. Here, this will unexpectedly be engaged. How did students adapt to this situation?
- Did I engage the students? Did I miss opportunities to engage them more? Did I over-engage?
- Do you think students used the privacy of the break-out rooms to have an informal chat after the exercise? Do you think that is OK?
- Do you think I had fun? Do you think the students noticed I had fun?
Reflection¶
I spent quite some time to prepare my lectures and I think I did a good job there. However -as happens more often- I felt without energy when actually doing the teaching.
At the start I asked some students to make them talk, yet I did not persist as planned and I felt the questions were too low-level for university staff.
I was sloppy in sharing the URLs needed in the chat. Luckily, Diana corrected that! I did talk to the students less, as I had quite some helpers, and I wanted them to do teaching. This came at the cost that I did not observe student progress myself, but I trust the helpers to have a good enough judgement there.
I sent away some helpers at the start, yet still next time I want to be be more clear in the amount of helpers and follow up on this. I really only need 1 helper, else I will see the students less. Again, no complaints about the enthusiastic helpers, yet they have their own errands as well.
- TODO: be more clear I need 1 helpers and act on this
Directly after my teaching, I write this reflection and go to sleep directly afterwards :-)
Due to an informal talk with Björn in the breaks, it came out that Björn discusses the interactive login as well. I was happy that it can be moved from where I discuss it: at the start, directly after login.
- TODO: Remove starting an interactive session in the first hour on login
Reflection after evaluation result¶
Evaluation 2023-09-23¶
Results¶
The 5 students gave the course a 3.4 out of 5.0, so there can definitely be be improvements.
The difficulty level of the material presented differed a lot, and I don't see what information this question gives.
- TODO: suggest to remove this question
The students were satisfied with a 3.6 out of 5.0, so so there can definitely be be improvements. I am unsure how much this question differs with the first.
- TODO: suggest to remove this question.
The students seem to appreciate the first hours (I had 2 out of the first 3 hour) and its active approach:
I appreciated the first three hours of the course. They were interactive and appropriately paced with questions, information on how to answer the questions then answers. I appreciated the small group pairings with a mix of experienced and inexperienced users.
Learning by doing
The hands in for the first part was really an introduction on how to use Bianca for moving files around, to understand purpose of the cluster and the advantages of working with it. So the initial part before lunch seemed quite logical and educational.
the online material useful and very extensive
On students like the File transfer, thinlinc most, which is more about
the topics than the way of teaching.
Three out of five students liked least the second half of the course, which I did not teach, hence I leave these out. The other two have suggestions:
Introduction to linux could be set as a separate/pre course event for non experienced users
breakout rooms for all the exercises. perhaps have 3 rooms: "advanced", "beginner" "in-between", and then course participants could allocate themselves.
I see where that comes from: we have a group with diverse backgrounds. The suggestion to use levels would not work well with my approach, as I like to combine beginners and more advanced students, but I would be able to do this for the more advanced topics.
Five out of five students request the afternoon sessions to have more dedicated time. As I did not teach this, I will not comment on this.
Three out of five students state that the first hour, second hour and both first two hours could have had less dedicated time. I would predict the more advanced students state this and I estimate that the beginners (i.e. the target group) are happy with the allocated time.
There was one nice additional comment for me:
I thought Richel in particular showed thoughtfulness to how students learn and how to teach with a group of mixed experienced participants.
This is nice to hear: I was unsure how my way of teaching would be appreciated (see the lesson plan and earlier reflection), so thanks to that/those student(s)!
Post-course course evaluation meeting of 2023-1108¶
- Remove starting an interactive session in the first hour on login from the early course material; it will be discussed later
- Using mixed groups (i.e. putting experts in rooms with beginners) may be a useful tool
Evaluation questions¶
How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the course?
1 (Poor) to 5 (Excellent)
Rate the difficulty level of the material presented?
1 (Easy) to 5 (Advanced)
How satisfied are you with the presentations?
1 (Not at all) to 5 (Completely)
What did you like the most about the course?
What did you like the least about the course?
Which sessions should have had more dedicated time?
Which sessions should have had less dedicated time?
Additional comments