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Reflection

  • Date of teaching: 2023-01-18
  • Reflection date: 2023-01-18
  • Teacher: Richel

Before the lesson

At the day of teaching, I was quite happy with my preparation: I put the book I used into teaching cycles of about a half or an hour.

I was, however, quite nervous:

fear for resistance against non-lecturing: from another course, I've seen that some learners expect a stock-standard course of lectures and exercises and will turn against me when I follow the best practices of the literature instead.

fear for resistance against student-centered teaching: I felt that following the pace of the learners is The Right Thing To Do: if they work reasonably efficient, I should assume that the exercises made per time unit to be at their pace. However, would that feel too slow?

fear for being underprepared for another course: I was in the process of preparing for another course, of which I -at the time of teaching- had 1 day left to prepare. I had a hard time falling asleep, which was not helpful.

However, the evening before the lesson, I checked the literature if I would be able to defend the choices I made. Yes, I did.

I was reading an edited volume on teaching and chapter 3 was called 'Building rapport'. One of the tips was to talk about yourself and your teaching style. I don't like to talk about myself (as knowledge about me is not part of the course), but I decided to try this out and made a presentation (see A1 for the content).

During the lesson

I was in the Zoom room at around 8:30, which is 30 minutes on time. I tried to make some contact with the learners, without success. My day of teaching is the fourth of a series of lessons and I felt the learners asymptotically approached coming in at 8:59 at each successive day.

I started at 9:00 sharp. I took the time for the learners to turn on a camera. I told the learners how I will behave differently with a camera on or off.

I lectured the presentation about myself, which is the least important thing of the course, so some learners could connect their camera. About 80%-95% of around 33 learners had a camera on after finishing the presentation.

I started the first teaching cycle: 'What do you think about when you think about Python?', were I randomly asked learners. They knew I would, as that was in the presentation about me already. I took care to bend most answers that show a learner is not perfect into something more mild.

I took time to discuss the workflow of how to do an exercise in pairs. My favorite part in theory was the way I would determine to move to a next exercise: (1) all learners start in pairs, (2) when a pair is done, they go to the main room, after which they are distributed over other rooms, (3) when two thirds of the students is in the main room, I close the Breakout rooms ruthlessly: (a) the remaining pairs have another minutes left, (b) the remainders are likely to catch up in the next cycle. (4) when all learners are back, ask answers to individual students and give feedback on those answers.

The Feedback phase felt slow to me: I asked one learner per question, asked him/her to share the screen and try to do reproduce the answer again. Still, I knew 'Feedback' is the 10th most impactful intervention, which made me follow the plan.

After the Feedback, I usually connected what we just learned to earlier knowledge again, using concept maps and repeat concepts. Also here: I know this is important to do.

While the learners did their exercises, there was a lot of waiting for me. I needed to be in the main room, so I could move people around: sometimes, people would not go to a breakout room (for example, because they were not behind a computer at that time) or had a computer reboot or had multiple logins (e.g. a computer to share screen and a phone to share camera). Also, I sent the helpers to go through the rooms, due to which I had even less to do. It was quite dull for me. I did not want to do something else, to maintain focus.

I commonly, but not always, instructed the helpers to do something like this: 'Go through rooms x to y to observe (1) the atmosphere of the room, (2) if the learners know what to do. Do not lecture the learners'. I am unsure if all helpers understood and I cannot check that either. Maybe next time ask:

  • Q: What is the purpose of visiting the breakout rooms?
  • A: To check if the learners can work and do so in a welcoming way
  • Q: If, in a breakout room, the learners appear to be concentrated, what do you do?
  • A: Do not disturb and move to the next breakout room: you've seen they can work
  • Q: If, in a breakout room, two learners are discussing something. They, however, have reached a wrong conclusion. What do you do?
  • A: Do not disturb and move to the next breakout room: you've seen they can work
  • Q: If, in a breakout room, two learners have an unfriendly argument, what do you do?
  • A: Do something about this. This is up to you. Either handle this yourself or ask me to take care of it. Always let me know
  • Q: If, in a breakout room, two learners are discussing Pokemon, what do you do?
  • A: Do something about this to set them back to work in a friendly way
  • Q: If, in a breakout room, only one learner has no camera, what do you do?
  • A: Do not disturb and move to the next breakout room: you have no evidence they cannot work
  • Q: If, in a breakout room, both learners have no camera, what do you do?
  • A: Do not disturb and move to the next breakout room: you have no evidence they cannot work
  • Q: If, in a breakout room, one or both learners ask a question to you. What do you do?
  • A: Determine if you should answer: have they discussed together already? If yes, help them arrive at finding the right answer. Only give a direct answer as a last option

While the learners did their exercises, twice I went through all the breakout rooms anyways. I felt blind and the need to sample at least once or twice. I took care to go in each room with a neutral expression, say nothing, and leave with a visible thumbs up. Only rarely did I get questions. The questions were relevant to fix. I've seen mostly learners that were reading/programming in deep focus, or sharing a screen and talking.

I followed the break schedule loyally, even when a break happened in the middle of an exercise. I already stated to the learners I would do that, as breaks are important.

During the day, we did around 5 teaching cycles.

I shortened the Challenge (i.e. exercise) about find the right UPPMAX module for a Python package: it is hard to get right and is more UPPMAX than Python (and Python is at the focus of this day). I told the learners why and showed them the YouTube video and encouraged them to watch it later: I wanted to move on to the next session.

There was some dead space when 10 learners where in the main room, when all groups already have 1 extra helper, waiting for a remaining trio to finish. I told I would not to discuss the answer yet, but am open to any other questions. Some learners had some Python or UPPMAX questions, sometimes I asked for feedback about the book and its exercises.

At 15:55 I interrupted the last cycle to repeat what we did and look at the course material that is also there. In the last minute, I thanked the group for being great to work with.

At 16:00 sharp the learners left and I had a meeting with one of them: he is involved in teaching and I wanted to discuss teaching as colleagues. He stayed, Pavlin stayed too and we discussed teaching and mostly got feedback (see A2 below). Pavlin discovered that Zoom's random shuffle algorithm puts people with cameras in the first rooms! He discovered that due to this, there is a huge difference between the atmosphere in room 1 and 16: room 1 was the most fun, room 16 was colder. Pavlin felt the learners were having fun and being productive at the same time.

At around 16:15 the day was over.

I think the day was efficient and I feel most of the credits must go to the cooperative learners. On the other hand, I did plan to make it likely to get them to cooperate :-)

Possible improvements

[DONE] Split up the exercises for the block 'Variables, expressions and statement' in different pages: I intended to cut that up in three teaching cycles, as can be seen in the schedule. However, this ended up in one, because the exercises for these three cycles were on the one same page. I will split that up in three pages for next time.

Learners will heavily depend on a camera. Consider making this more explicit in the advertising of the course. Also: encourage camera usage in earlier days of the course.

Consider being more clear to helpers what is the idea behind the lesson setup: they are likely to expect classic lecturing. Make a flow-chart on what to do in a group room.

Future

I hope next iteration, I am allowed to teach this course again with the same setup, to build up confidence in the positive effect of the setup.

Appendix

A1. Presentation about myself

# Who is Richèl?

<https://github.com/UPPMAX/uppmax_intro_python/tree/main/lesson_plans/20240118>
![](CC-BY-NC-SA.png)

## How to pronounce my name

Language  | Pronounciation 
----------|----------------
**Dutch** | 'Rie-sjel'     
English   | 'Rea-shell'    
French    | 'Richèl'       
German    | 'Ri-shäll'     
Swedish   | 'Ri-kjell'     

## Teaching

-   2007-2008 MSc: Teaching in Pre-higher education in Biology
-   Oct 2008-Aug 2010: 0.6 FTE teacher and team leader, 12-18 yo
-   Jan 2014-Jan 2021: coordinator of multiple courses, as volunteer, 8-18 yo
-   Sep 2022-now: coordinator of multiple courses, as volunteer, 8-18 yo
-   Sep 2019-now: team leader of programming team, 13-38 yo
-   Mar 2023-now: teacher at UPPMAX, 18-88 yo

## Teaching style

-   Literate
-   Evidence-based, e.g. @hattie2012visible, @schwartz2012evidence
-   Active learning
-   Learning community
-   Well-prepared
-   Student-centered
-   Transparent

## Features

-   Every learner needs to be active
-   Follows the pace of learners that need more time 
-   Fast learners help
-   Asks learners randomly @bell2020fundamentals
-   Dare to try out new things (and fail in plain sight) @bell2020fundamentals

## Lecturing

I only do this for unimportant topics.

This was the only lecture in the course :-)

(I **do** need to tell about myself @schwartz2012evidence)

A2. Feedback

I had some questions, for example 'What is the interactive node 
going to do with my output?'. It is great that we practiced this!

If no video, the teacher cannot see when learners are lost:
great idea to turn cameras on for that too!

 - Day 1: 
    - Should be more hands-on
    - Low tempo 
    - More conceptual than technical
    - Move some Day 2 content to Day 1, to be more hands-on
 - Day 2: 
    - Great! 
    - Prefer less in-depth
    - If no experience with Linux, it is hard to keep up.
 - Day 3: 
   - Douglas: see Day 2
   - Diana: 
     - Good day, yet the focus was more on Linux,
       then making the learners think and be active learners.
     - Less content, e.g only Slurms things that are most important, less Linux flags
 - Day 4:
   - lovely
   - fresh
   - kept audience awake
   - As a learner, you do not want to be berated when giving an answer. 
     Richel tries to gently deal with a wrong answer and he does this great
   - cameras on is great: else learners feel alone
   - in a gentle way, Richel makes people feel that this is serious:
     there is a schedule, there are exercises and we are going to do it!
   - breaks are great: two hours, 1.5 hours is tough!
   - interrupting an exercise for a break is fine