🔁 Improving semester over semester

Before

After

⏰ Last minute projects
Several students waited until the last few days of the bootcamp to do the bulk of their semester-long case study project work. This case study requires user research, low-fi design, usability testing, and a final high-fi design...none of which could be effecitively rushed into 2-3 days of work.

✅ Multiple project check-ins
My second semester teaching, I established a cadence of two progress presentations and several group check-ins with myself or another instructor over the course of the semester. This set-up check points to keep students on track, accountable, and completing their projects in a timely manor.

🗣 Lecture-heavy classes
A piece of feedback we recieved from students during the first semester was that many of our bootcamp sessions were too lecture heavy. After a long day of Georgia Tech classes, students are too fatigued to stay engaged for another 2-hour bootcamp lecture in the evenings.

✅ Engaging interactive compontents
Incorporating the student feedback into my semester planning, I decided to cap bootcamp sessions at 30 minutes of lecture time and to fill the rest of the time with critiques and hands-on activities. This intiative proved to be a huge success in increasing student engagement and allowing students to practice course concepts while recieving guidance from instructors.

💬 Scattered communication
Between multiple Slack channels & DMs, Notion pages, Figma, and Bluejeans video calls, students expressed being overwhelmed about where to look for information about about bootcamp sessions, events, projects, and homework.

✅ Course hub
For the second semester, I created the “Bootcamp Syllabus & Hub” via Notion: this master document included all due-dates, relevant event info, links to lecture slides and Figma files, and class video recordings for the semester. The implementation of the Bootcamp Hub was a success and has been replicated in newer additions of the bootcamp.

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