Conversational curriculum

[ivan-unfolds]

It's been noticed that some talks from outside speakers are often repeated across cohorts. It may be a good idea to double down on this trend:

Retention of Key Sessions: We acknowledge that certain talks, like FAC23 Oli's presentation on understanding big codebases, provide immense value to our students. Such sessions should be a staple in our program and continue to be delivered every term.

Content Structuring: Presently, our external speakers are given the freedom to talk about whatever they deem fit. While this allows for a broad spectrum of topics, it can also result in a lack of focus and structure. We propose to switch to a more thematic approach. Each week or session could have a specific theme that the speaker would be asked to adhere to. This would ensure a more organised learning path and would also make it easier for students to follow along and prepare.

Thematic Planning: If we decide to proceed with the thematic approach, we need to decide the themes we want to cover in specific weeks. This would require a collaborative brainstorming to make sure we are covering all the essential areas in coding and development that would benefit our students.

Pre-Talk Material: In order to make these talks more engaging and conversational, it would be beneficial to have pre-written material that students could read before a talk. This way, students would come to the talk already having a base level of understanding about the topic. It would give them the opportunity to ask more insightful questions and engage more deeply with the speaker.

relates #737

[Albadylic]

Possible topics:

• Debugging (Problem solving techniques #845)
• Understanding a big codebase (Learning outcomes need to be made more specific #787)

[Psydwinder]

Here is a list of the topics the speakers will be presenting https://airtable.com/shrjXXjm65Hghgoee

also check out #872

[ivan-unfolds]

@ivanmauricio to schedule session with @sofer @Psydwinder to discuss formation of outside speaker curriculum

[Psydwinder]

Just had a chat with some of the FAC27 cohort and they have mentioned that it would be great to have some speakers that can talk about the 4 core roles (UX, QA, DevOps and Scrum) within a work environment as well as giving context about about how their role fits in with all the other roles in order for a team to operate smoothly.

[ivan-unfolds]

it's probably incumbent on us to come up with introductory content for all these topics (could be a 5 minute video for each one)

then when a speaker comes in, they could use that video as a kick-off point for running session

@ivanmauricio to look to arrange a session in august to take a stab at the first draft of a structure for the conversational curriculum

it would be useful to start arranging this as early as possible into @camelPhonso and @eliazzo's time as Cfs as it's been diffcult to arrange speakers in the past

[Psydwinder]

Looking at feedback from learners about Figma and Design Week in general. In particular this one:

Figma was still challenging - as much as it was helpful to get some tips from our mentor, there hasn't been enough time to learn to use Figma + design schemes 'properly' over the design weeks. It has still been useful to interact with it as I know it is something I will use during my apprenticeship.

This is just one example, but a few of them struggled with using Figma to create their protoypes.

Therefore, it might be worth having a speaker coming in Week 4 to give an introduction to Figma before the learners have to use it in Week 5 for the new Tech for Better structure