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Reflection 2023-09-11

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