My comments to my peer on their practice below – these are extracted from the Observation Form, attached here.
” It was great joining the seminar session. A few points I picked up on below:
- I very much liked how you set the tone from the start, getting everyone settled in and providing a clear context for what was happening during the session.
- You opened the teaching part by linking the contents to the previous lecture, and checking for any follow-up questions, which I thought it was very helpful to reinforce the links between both sessions as a context for this seminar.
- It was noticeable that most of the group was engaged with the material, following your teaching on the big screen. While attention dropped a little occasionally, your use of examples and guidance helped bring everyone back on track.
- It was impressive how much ground you covered in just an hour, maintaining a light pace without sacrificing depth in your explanations.
- Your use of examples –i.e. the customer profiles- was really effective. Your explanations on why those were good examples to follow, and giving tips by highlighting the positive elements on them made the task even clearer.
- Moving on to the activity, you explained it clearly, and the group responded instantly and engaged in their groups.
- There weren’t many questions from the group at class level. However, everyone seemed comfortable and positive, which speaks to how approachable you come across. You actively checked on everyone in the class at some point and managed to check in on each group in the first few minutes of the activity, making sure everyone was happy and clear with the task.
- I appreciated how you made every piece of content and conversation relevant to the assessment and kept the energy relaxed and flexible.
- Giving a heads-up a few minutes before wrapping up was helpful, and most groups started closing their discussions with enough time to move on from the activity. I thought that this evidenced that you were in good control of the timings all throughout the seminar, despite the challenging amount of content and the multiple discussions you assisted.
- Your wrap-up to the session was clear and concise, providing a solid overview of the key points and what comes next.
Some suggestions:
- Time allowing, checking in with the whole group more regularly could help keep them more consistently engaged during the teaching part –i.e. maybe throwing out some questions to gauge or encouraging them to connect the dots themselves, rather than just presenting all the content.
I hope this is useful. Thanks a lot for inviting me to join! I really enjoyed it, and it was very helpful for my own practice. “