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Reflection day 5 autumn 2023

Before the lesson, I was already regretting the fact that such a cool topic is given on the last day of the course: I was most tired that day for the regular preparation time (from 5:00-9:00) and was least productive due to that.

Additionally, I felt the need to spend one hour on the Retrospective by the learners and adept. I did, at the cost of other things.

I will use the Retrospect to guide the rest of my reflection.

Only Day 5

What went well?

  • Pairing works much better +1

I mentioned I/we intended to nearly-always do Pair Programming at the start of my lecture, when I discussed the Retrospective of the day before.

  • Using HackMD for UML was very nice. +2
  • Using HackMD to code rather than screen sharing +3

I mentioned that any useful way to collaborate are encouraged, at the start of my lecture, when I discussed the Retrospective of the day before.

  • nice too have R examples +1

Our two R users deserved some love :-)

  • learning what modules are
  • Activity diagram +2
  • Once it worked, plantUML in VS code was very nice

What held us back?

  • too little time for material and exercises of morning session
  • did not finish all of morning lecture +1
  • More info about use-cases/activity diagrams. Use, differences etc.
  • morning exercises rushed
  • maybe somewhat unclear difference between use-case and activity diagrams +1
  • UML issues +3
  • Still material and exercise description

I won't discuss the morning section, as it was not me that taught it.

  • The presentation is less informative to follow on

Unsure if this was about my part. If it was about my part, unsure what it means.

  • Still material and exercise description

This applies to both halves of the day. I added explicit goals more often, yet did not always do due to choices I made regarding time management.

  • profiling part was a little diffuse

Due to I chose to go through the Retrospect of the day before, indeed, the exercise was a little diffuse.

  • some changes are not staged after Git pulling. No change..

This is a misconception and/or git feature.

What can we improve?

  • spend more time on use-case and activity diagrams +3
  • provide the uml code for diagram examples in lecture
  • talk more about design patterns +1 or maybe share some nice tutorials
  • Written instructions for exercises
  • Be clearcut on what to do in the exercise.

This is morning session, no comment. I copied the lines that can apply to both here below.

  • Written instructions for exercises
  • Be clearcut on what to do in the exercise.

I agree, I chose not to have time to do this for all exercise.

  • Have a mini start-to-end exercise after the course where we can spend half the day running through a small piece of coding. Practise all of it.

I think this is an interesting idea. I do think building up a shared repo is more insightful though. OTOH, for the lesson on optimization, it may be superior.

  • examples for optimisation showing well- and poorly-optimised examples +1

Great idea! I somehow lost some old examples and had not had the time to find this.

Conclusion Day 5

I am happy to see the learners and I agree on what can be improved :-)