Pairing & Feedback
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I wasn’t expecting that the pairing sessions would be so much fun! In addition, they really helped me a lot in understanding particular topics. Although I think I would have been able to solve the challenges on my own, working together was often just faster than doing it alone, I guess.
In my mind, the most rewarding thing of the paring sessions was the improvement of my communication. I don’t think that I benefitted an awful lot on the technical side. However, I learned some cool new tricks from others. Sometimes people had some really helpful ideas, for instance how to solve the problem that the drop down menu for my blog posts was getting more and more bulky with a growing number of entries. This very problem-solving suggestion was particularly nice of the guy, because he thought about the problem after our pairing session and emailed me later on.
I consider myself lucky, because every single person I met during the hangouts was very nice and a pleasure to work with. Maybe that’s because of the thorough DBC member selection process beforehand? I don’t know.
Having said that, it was sometimes a bit tedious to give ASK feedback. Sure, if you desperately want to find something you could give constructive feedback on, you’ll always find something. But in many cases the pairing session went so well, that I felt a bit picky about the feedback I gave. I was a bit nervous when I first received feedback, as I wasn’t really sure of how people liked my style of teamwork. But when I read it, I was surprised how nicely some people thought of me. I didn’t necessarily expect that, because I was often very tired during our sessions, due to the timezone differences. I thought that might have led to some feedback concerning lacks in concentration.
Since the feedback is anonymous, I think it’s okay to publish a sentence from one piece of feedback that I received: „One thing you could do to further improve the communication flow is repeating back the gist of what your pair says/explains, just to let the other person know you got the main ideas down because sometimes I wasn't sure if you fully understood what I said or were a little confused.“
Again this is something constructive regarding my communication. In fact, all the constructive feedback I received was pointed at my style of communication. So I didn’t learn a lot about how better code looks like, but rather how to actually write the code in a teamwork environment.
Based on the feedback I’ve received, I will try to be more precise when speaking, and also to let others know that I understand what they are saying.
So what’s my take on using pairing and feedback to guide learning?
First, I want to cover Pairing independently:
I think pairing is a great way of learning to get along with other people well. It can also accelerate the learning of technical knowledge, as more experienced partners can quickly show you something that they might have researched in hours of work. In addition, pairing is eminently suitable for being creative. I especially recognized this as the challenges got to involve bigger projects. Playing around with an idea with a partner can even be helpful if your partner is not as experienced, because a different viewing angle is always beneficial.
Sometimes it can be a bit tedious, especially when you realize that doing a certain task would take a lot less time when doing it alone. However, even in this case there’s a good chance of improving your communication skills.
Second, my thoughts on Feedback:
There’s no question that, in order to influence one’s learning and communication, feedback is in most cases fundamental. But what I realized now is that most of the Socrates anonymous feedback is fairly inefficient. The reason for this is that most people just take the „constructive“ feedback into consideration. I assume most of us have a healthy psyche and are therefore mentally strong enough to just hear some criticism. For me it’s a bit overkilling to always write how great the session was (in fact, all my sessions really went great), because it’s not important to the skills of my partner anyway. What I would suggest is a traffic light with five lamps, were the fifth lamp means „I was completely satisfied with the session“ and the first lamp means „You should really work on your communication habits“. Moreover there should of course be a text field were you should only enter constructive feedback.
I think positive feedback should be given during the session itself!
In my mind, the most rewarding thing of the paring sessions was the improvement of my communication. I don’t think that I benefitted an awful lot on the technical side. However, I learned some cool new tricks from others. Sometimes people had some really helpful ideas, for instance how to solve the problem that the drop down menu for my blog posts was getting more and more bulky with a growing number of entries. This very problem-solving suggestion was particularly nice of the guy, because he thought about the problem after our pairing session and emailed me later on.
I consider myself lucky, because every single person I met during the hangouts was very nice and a pleasure to work with. Maybe that’s because of the thorough DBC member selection process beforehand? I don’t know.
Having said that, it was sometimes a bit tedious to give ASK feedback. Sure, if you desperately want to find something you could give constructive feedback on, you’ll always find something. But in many cases the pairing session went so well, that I felt a bit picky about the feedback I gave. I was a bit nervous when I first received feedback, as I wasn’t really sure of how people liked my style of teamwork. But when I read it, I was surprised how nicely some people thought of me. I didn’t necessarily expect that, because I was often very tired during our sessions, due to the timezone differences. I thought that might have led to some feedback concerning lacks in concentration.
Since the feedback is anonymous, I think it’s okay to publish a sentence from one piece of feedback that I received: „One thing you could do to further improve the communication flow is repeating back the gist of what your pair says/explains, just to let the other person know you got the main ideas down because sometimes I wasn't sure if you fully understood what I said or were a little confused.“
Again this is something constructive regarding my communication. In fact, all the constructive feedback I received was pointed at my style of communication. So I didn’t learn a lot about how better code looks like, but rather how to actually write the code in a teamwork environment.
Based on the feedback I’ve received, I will try to be more precise when speaking, and also to let others know that I understand what they are saying.
So what’s my take on using pairing and feedback to guide learning?
First, I want to cover Pairing independently:
I think pairing is a great way of learning to get along with other people well. It can also accelerate the learning of technical knowledge, as more experienced partners can quickly show you something that they might have researched in hours of work. In addition, pairing is eminently suitable for being creative. I especially recognized this as the challenges got to involve bigger projects. Playing around with an idea with a partner can even be helpful if your partner is not as experienced, because a different viewing angle is always beneficial.
Sometimes it can be a bit tedious, especially when you realize that doing a certain task would take a lot less time when doing it alone. However, even in this case there’s a good chance of improving your communication skills.
Second, my thoughts on Feedback:
There’s no question that, in order to influence one’s learning and communication, feedback is in most cases fundamental. But what I realized now is that most of the Socrates anonymous feedback is fairly inefficient. The reason for this is that most people just take the „constructive“ feedback into consideration. I assume most of us have a healthy psyche and are therefore mentally strong enough to just hear some criticism. For me it’s a bit overkilling to always write how great the session was (in fact, all my sessions really went great), because it’s not important to the skills of my partner anyway. What I would suggest is a traffic light with five lamps, were the fifth lamp means „I was completely satisfied with the session“ and the first lamp means „You should really work on your communication habits“. Moreover there should of course be a text field were you should only enter constructive feedback.
I think positive feedback should be given during the session itself!