Classroom Culture
Objectives
After this lesson, students will be able to:
- Understand the importance of Workplace Culture
- Understand their rule in our classroom culture
- Apply the CACTI process for gaining support
Scrum
We're going to learn about Agile development later in the course but I wanted to make an early start on it with one of my favourite practices. Called Scrums or Standups, it's a quick fire meeting format.
Every morning at exactly 9.00 (so be here before then) and in the evening before we leave, we'll cluster together into three small groups - scrums work best with small numbers of people. David, Ahnaf and I will each chair one group. Each person will have 2 minutes to tell the group what they did yesterday, anything they found particularly challenging and anything useful they discovered which might help others.
This is intentionally not much time and we'll be very strict with it, the point of it is not to discuss these issues but to flag them and create prompts for conversations later during the labs and breaks.
What is Company Culture
Whether you end up working in a big tech compnay, a small startup or something inbetween, you will no doubt get pulled into conversations about the company culture. Compnay Culture refers to the way an organisation functions internally, it can be both operational and attitudinal.
Here are some examples of Company Culture Promotional Videos:
Our Classroom Culture
We will run our Classroom like a company and as such we will emphaise our culture. We have agreed to the below:
- We encourage questions! We do not consider any question to be stupid, it is better to ask than never to know. Boy will collect questions if he does not answer them directly in class.
- We trust the knowledge of our peers! We first direct questions to each other, then our TAs and finally our Instructors.
- No Laptops during lectures. We don't get distracted during lectures as this will cause to fall behind and drag others with us. This means we avoid using laptops/phones and other gadgets for non class purposes.
- We want to get to know each other! So we change seats daily and spend time outside of class socialising (such as De-stress Fridays) or sharing on Slack.
- We like a clean work environment! So we avoid smelly food in a classroom and clean up after ourselves at breaks and the end of the day. We also keep our facilities like toilets and communal spaces clean.
- We keep alert by taking regular breaks! This includes getting a good nights sleep.
- Be Nice. We help each other and are not judgey We will each progress at different paces on different topics, so when we know something well we offer to help those who are still learning it.
- Ask People! Whenever we need help, we do not hesitate to ask for help from one another, the TAs, or the instructor.
- Have Fun Have the best 3 months of your life :)
CACTI Problem Solving (5 minutes)
We're going to rush through a lot of materials, and there's a lot of you, less TAs and even less mes. So we're going to take a CACTI approach to solving problems.
CACTI
- CHECK the materials, yours and online.
- ASK a peer during breakout or in Labs, NOT during lecture
- share with the CLASS on Slack
- consult a TA
- request a 1-on-1 with the Instructor (me)
The instructor should be the last resort, simply because there is only one and many many students. In the weeks following projects there will be 1-on-1s, where each student will have a good amount of time to discuss their overrall progress with instructors.
Journalling (5 minutes)
This is optional but recommended. You should keep a Journal! It can be anything: a blog, a Medium series, a Word doc or literally a physical journal. The point is that at the end of each day you should take 15 minutes to write down a reflection on what you've learnt today. What you enjoyed? What you found difficult? And anything else you'd like to put on paper. Later down the course this will be a great tool to help you realise just how far you've progressed and boost your confidence to keep going.