Workshop at Matrusri College on 27th Feb 2017

Post workshop feedback

Audience: a) There is a mix of students and faculty from Electrical / Mechanical / Civil / Electronics / Computers.

Observation: While demo, participants started looking for labs / experiments specific to their branch of engineering. Obviously, they did not find what they are looking for. Mainly due to the fact, we run only 4 or 5 labs (VMs).

Suggestion 1: For demos, or even in production, the UI should only show the labs whose VMs are running. This may be achieved statically or dynamically. For demo, it is better to limit the UI elements corresponding to the VMs running. Achieving such a dynamic behaviour is complex and needs to understand the internals of the edX. Further more, "Service Not Available" error should be replaced with more meaningful message.

Suggestion 2: Chose only limited set of faculty members first; plan 30 minutes session ahead of the full demo.

Suggestion 3: Make seating arrangements based on the engineering discipline. This helps the presenter to focus to a group if needed.

Suggestion 4: Make arrangements - 1 terminal for 2 students. It is a quick demo, so it is OK to learn together.

Suggestion 5: Distinguish who is at which year / semester.
Sound systems: If available, better to arrange a sound system in the demo / workshop hall.
Assistants. At least 5 TA/RA/Employees/Trainers are needed to handle the queries from the audience while demos.

Suggestion on Agenda and schedule:

Intro session: 10 minutes. 2 speakers 5 minutes each. Distribute handouts about the labs. URL to access, feedback form - 5 minutes.

Total Intro session: 15 minutes.
When a main demo is started, a clear Agenda should be displayed. Each step is sequential and synchronous; i.e, participants and presenters are doing the tasks below in sync.
1. User registration - say 10 minutes.
2. Logged in user screen / features - a quick glance. 5 minutes
3. Enrol / subscribe to Labs. - 5 minutes
4. Recap - 5 minutes. Works like a buffer. -------------- around 25 to 30 minutes past the demo ---------------
5. The structure of Labs, Experiments. - 10 minutes.
6. First Lab by respective TA/RA/Faculty - Just focus on 1 lab. All the participants should just follow the instructions of the Presenter only. - 10 minutes. 6.1 Recap of the Lab 5 minutes.
7. Second Lab by respective TA/RA/Faculty - Just focus on 1 lab. All the participants should just follow the instructions of the Presenter only. - 10 minutes. 7.1 Recap of the Lab 5 minutes. -------------- around 40 to 45 minutes past the demo ---------------
8. If the audience is from many engineering disciplines, they extend the lab demo for each discipline.
Total: 1 Hour 30 minutes by now.

Q&A + feedback faculty: 15 minutes. Q&A + feedback students: 15 minutes.

Total: 2:00 Hours.

vlabs-workshops / college-cloud-edition-workshops