Reflection 2025-03-07

This was the first iteration of this course, which made it hard to make any predictions.

I was quite tired, due to too much teaching at the same time. During the day, however, even though I felt not at the peak of my abilities, I did a reasonable job.

Based on the first NAISS-wide 'Intro to Python' course (of 2025-03-04), all we could expect is that 25% of all registered participants would show up. This turned out to be true, with 24% (37 registrations, 9 learners that stayed the whole course).

How well the schedule would work was a big unknown. I talked to my colleague that I want him to teach, but with a student-centered approach, this may not have worked. We were both open and flexible about this. The schedule, however, turned out reasonably well, with my colleague indeed being able to lead his sessions in the allotted times.

The breaks were a source of confusion: the first was at 9:50, the second at 11:00. It turned out that the first session could use 10 more minutes.

• [ ] Suggest for next time: breaks at 10:00 and 11:00

These are some notes about the course in time:

Time	Description
9:00	Start
9:17	Learners to BO rooms
9:30	One learner left due to bad internet
9:37	First group done with FileZilla
9:43	Second group done with FileZilla
10:30	One learner left due to unknown reasons
10:43	One learner left due to unknown reasons
11:18	BC starts lecture
11:34	BC ends lecture, starts questions
11:37	Learners go to BO rooms
11:52	Evaluation starts
12:02	Last learner leaves

The evaluation questions should be changed: 'I am comfortable to transfer files to/from my cluster' should be added, as this is the main goal of the course.

• [ ] Add: 'I am comfortable to transfer files to/from my cluster'

Additionally, BC's later addition about zipping files should have been added too.

• [ ] Add: 'I am comfortable to transfer files to/from my cluster'

The two learners that used Alvis had a heard time: both FileZilla and rsync (under Windows) are hardest to use there. They were delighted when scp worked directly. Maybe we should start with scp, as it is already pre-installed on all computers?

These are the amount of learners per cluster, including learners that were there for short amount of time and/or used two clusters:

HPC cluster name	Number of learners
Alvis	3
Bianca	1
COSMOS	1
Dardel	0
Kebnekaise	1
Rackham	2
Tetralith	3

I think the comparison of the different tools should have been done stronger:

• [ ] Add 'Can do remote to remote yes/no'
• [ ] Add 'Can do large files yes/no'
• [ ] Add 'Asks to overwrite yes/no'
• [ ] Add 'Suitable for sensitive data yes/no'
• [ ] Add 'Tolerant to interrupted connection yes/no'

I enjoyed working together with my colleague: it felt we were a team to me.

Me and my colleague talked a lot in how to make the learners move between rooms. We considered using 'Gather Town' or other tools for the next time

• [ ] Consider other tool, e.g. https://sowork.com/ (which is free for an unlimited amount of learners)

I think it would be more fun me and my colleague alternate hours, e.g. I lead hours 1 and 3. Maybe then, if learners are done with hour 1, they can come to my colleague and get introduced to hour 2. And when those are done, they can come back to me. In such a way, the faster groups can go through the course faster.

The learners were great: they we helping each other and were flexible in welcoming new guests to their rooms.

All in all, I think we did a reasonable job for a first course iteration and I think we have enough ideas to smoothen this out.

Reflection on evaluation results

• Number of registrations: 37
• Number of active learners: 9 (24% show-up rate)
• Number of evaluations: 8 (89% response rate)
• Average confidence: 3.3 (out of 5)
• Success score (i.e. average confidence rescaled to 100%): 66%

So, the weakest session was rsync. I think this can be alleviated by doing scp first. FileZilla is the one-but-worst session. Maybe because both sessions require software installations? Maybe FileZilla is not as easy, due to that ...?

Say something positive about Richèl

• Clear communication, really wanted to help
• Very enthusiastic and motivating teacher
• He was very friendly and made the course very enjoyable to attend
• He was really interested in me being able to use rsync and made sure that I could connect to the cluster to be able to do the exercises despite not having access to the course cluster.
• He encourages learners to find ways to find the answer
• Very motivating, he keeps us awake without the coffee

Say something about Richèl he can improve

• Doesn't always listen very well.

I know that this sometimes is true, when I think course-wide, instead of 'just' with one learner. And I did feel jumpy, as I could not predict how the course went.

• Sometimes it is hard to guess what is the next thing to do.

My bad: I should be clearer here ... :-/

Any other feedback?

• It would be nice to start with scp and sftp so it's more likely you'll succeed with at least something, then getting stuck on filezilla and rsync for two hours and almost wanting to give up.

I would agree with this! Maybe BC wants to do hours 1 and 3 :-) ?

• I think as one of the prerequisites, all users should use same terminal type (like Ubuntu) and participants installed Ubuntu if they use windows prior to the course.
• Add rsync to the requirements and steps on how to install it

These two suggestions indeed solve problems!

• [ ] Discuss with BC: add installed software to the prerequisites?

• Thanks!

• I couldn't use rsync but I could use sftp and scp. FileZilla I didn't have time to try it but I will. Thank you very much!

Yay!