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Reflection day 4 autumn 2023

Feedback from learners

What went well?

  • The pull request part was really imprssive
  • Found the pull request aspect of the practical useful +1
  • Git pairing is more efficient
  • .
  • Hands on
  • Refelcting on earlier feedback +1
  • CI is quite cool. HackMD is good for discussion
  • Testing proper git workflow +1
  • Practising with opening issues, assigning them, opening pull requests on GitHub, as well as dealing with merge conflicts
  • Interactive
  • enthusiastic teaching! +2
  • Nice practice time and pair coding
  • Going back to revise the pull requests. I learnt alot from that. +1
  • Responded to feedback
  • Frequent breaks. +1

What held us back?

  • Made a mistake on a pull request and got time shortage for merge part
  • PR opened when the develop branch failed seems not update automatically when develop was fixed
  • correct pull request was overwirtten
  • exercise goals not always clear
  • Material should be more informative
  • Screensharing on linux
  • [Richel moved this to here] I couldn't start my own HackMD doc for live coding with subscribing.

What can we improve?

  • Speed a litte bit to make decrease in the lecture part
  • More discussion around appopriate classes/structs for solving project.
  • Work with an established exercise
  • I would have liked more indept discussion about data structures and algorithms. Here you didn't say much more than that they are concepts you can use. (+1)
  • write some light program thats can actually do something, e.g., visualize the bacteria moving?
  • explain how to setup CI locally? so it automatically check the sutomation before push
  • It may sometimes make sense to be in groups of 3 (vs 2) - but I guess this is subjective
  • HackMD pages for shared coding? Maybe I missed it but I think it could be better than screensharing. - Students get thier own mini projects to go thru all the practices. Rather than scattered excercises.
  • state goals before each break out room

Reflection on lesson by Richel

(also today, no time to properly reflect) (nice, I have the literal text!)

  • Responded to feedback
  • Refelcting on earlier feedback +1

Sharing my reflections with the students was appreciated. This was an experiment. Will keep doing so.

  • Found the pull request aspect of the practical useful +1
  • The pull request part was really imprssive
  • Testing proper git workflow +1
  • Going back to revise the pull requests. I learnt alot from that. +1
  • Practising with opening issues, assigning them, opening pull requests on GitHub, as well as dealing with merge conflicts

During the day, I gradually made the team's workflow more formal. One can argue if this is part of a Programming Formalisms course, as it does not involve technical terms. The students do think it useful :-)

  • Git pairing is more efficient pair coding

I am happy to see at least two learners have seen the light :-)

  • enthusiastic teaching! +2

I am happy this did not backfire in this course :-)

  • Nice practice time
  • Hands on

Seems like a right mix between exercises and theory then? I know Lars called the day 'Exercise-heavy' and I without discussion agree I do do more exercises. Again, it is the tension between practice and theory in the Programming Formalisms course :-)

  • CI is quite cool.

Happy to see at least one learner seen this, even though the CI lecture felt weak and misplaced to me. But yes, they saw it in actions from PRs.

Interactive

I did take the time for discussions. It did slow the day down!

HackMD is good for discussion

We did few exercises there and indeed HackMD has its place.

Frequent breaks. +1

I am happy people enjoy my breaks management.

Reflection on 'What held us back?'Reflection on '

  • exercise goals not always clear

Yup, I did add more goals to exercises, but due to last-moment changes I did not always do so. Agreed!

  • Material should be more informative

Again, indeed, show more books and go deeper.

  • I couldn't start my own HackMD doc for live coding with[out] subscribing.

Weird, AFAIR, with a GitHub account this works with a couple of clicks...?

  • Made a mistake on a pull request and got time shortage for merge part
  • PR opened when the develop branch failed seems not update automatically when develop was fixed
  • correct pull request was overwirtten

Good! Real-life experience with PRs :-)

  • Screensharing on linux

Yes, this really holds one back when pair programming :-/

Reflection on 'What can we improve?'

  • Speed a litte bit to make decrease in the lecture part

Yup, the -probably faster- students agree with me that the discussions slowed down the pace. This is one learner here, where one learner appreciated the discussions, so I consider this balances.

  • More discussion around appopriate classes/structs for solving project.
  • I would have liked more indept discussion about data structures and algorithms. Here you didn't say much more than that they are concepts you can use. (+1)

Yup, I pick to invest more time in design in my course time, even though it should have been done in the day about design. This cost me preparation (on that), lecturing and discussing deeper things. The course teacher have discussed to improve on this.

  • Work with an established exercise

Yup, exercises will mature to fit the course better. Unsure if 'established' indicates that the exercises seem too weird? As far as I see, I do have clear and relevant goals in mind.

  • state goals before each break out room

Agreed, I will try better!

  • explain how to setup CI locally? so it automatically check the automation before push

I will at the start

  • [ ] Explain how to setup CI locally: AFAIK, one cannot try before pushing from a .yaml file yet. But ruff . works to lint :-)
  • It may sometimes make sense to be in groups of 3 (vs 2) - but I guess this is subjective

I agree, especially when one cannot share his/her screen. Due to the random assignment of people (priority is to be quick!), this is pushed to the background

  • [ ] Share
  • write some light program that can actually do something, e.g., visualize the bacteria moving?

Ha, will do so now! We need it for profiling :-)

  • HackMD pages for shared coding? Maybe I missed it but I think it could be better than screensharing.

This may show I did a bad job is checking that pair programming is used in all exercises! On the other hand, I do agree with the idea and I will encourage pairs to do this if they feel this is better!

  • [ ] Address
  • Students get their own mini projects to go through all the practices. Rather than scattered exercises.

We picked a shared project, for many reasons: (1) the bigger the team, the more formal procedures shine, (2) we should work on the same simple exercises tailored to everyone (i.e. imagine a learner having a string-theory quantum-black hole project :-) ). The course -I agree- is getting more cohesive, yet I agree the exercises seem scattered. We have never gotten this far with a group yet and still we need to go further: the dream is developing one project in a week that actually works!