Every learner at Turing College has access to multiple stand-up meetings each week. The stand-ups are displayed on the platform’s calendar (intra.turingcollege). These meetings are inspired by the extremely popular daily scrum meetings that are utilized in most IT (and non-IT) companies today. A stand-up at Turing College is a meeting led by a Senior Team Lead during which you will get to regularly meet learners from your batch and build a community, discuss relevant topics, practice speaking skills and get help with your studies. Very importantly, a stand-up is not a “status report” (we see the progress of our learners anyway ) - it is instead a core part of the learning experience at Turing College.

Are stand-ups mandatory?

Stand-ups are a core way to make efficient use of the Turing College community and is also a great way to motivate yourself to make consistent progress.

If you joined Turing College in December 2024 or later:

• It is mandatory to attend stand-ups the first 6 weeks of joining Turing College. Since stand-ups begin the second week, this means only 5 total stand-ups are required (One per week).

  • If you miss a mandatory stand-up you will be prompted to write your reason on the learning platform. Reaching out to Turing College staff is not required

  • Learners should join when the stand-up begins - If joining late you may be asked to leave to not disrupt the session and join the next available session (A few minutes late is tolerable )

  • Stand Ups are a time to share and discuss with STLs/JTLs, and most importantly your fellow learners about your learning journey

  • Hosted on Zoom

  • Check Platform Calendar for the next Stand Ups

  • During the mandatory 6-week period, you may attend multiple stand-ups per week; however, you are still required to participate in stand-ups during the remaining weeks to fulfill the attendance requirement

Example schedule of mandatory stand-ups:

Week 1: Intro Day with Turing College! No Stand ups required. No attendance tracking required. If you missed Intro Day, you will receive a link via Discord to a recording

Week 2 - 6: Join at least one Stand up during the week

Scenario: Joining two Stand ups during Week 3, does not exempt you from joining a Stand up during Week 4

How to log your stand-up absence:

It is not required to reach out to the Turing College staff via chat or Discord

Structure of the stand-up meeting

A stand-up usually takes 30-45 minutes and has 3 separate parts:

• Learners sharing

• STL sharing

• Questions & discussions

Part 1: Learners sharing

At the start of the stand-up, the Senior Team Lead will choose the first learner to talk about the following two points:

1. What did you learn since the last stand-up? You should explain in your own words the key concepts of the most interesting or challenging topics that you encountered. Talk why you found these parts interesting or challenging. Very importantly, you should not just state the topics or skills - you should explain how you understood them.

2. What interesting question did you encounter when learning since the last stand-up? You should say whether you managed to solve this question or if it is still a question that you seek to solve (in both cases, it is OK to share it!). You may also describe whether the questions is crucial for moving forward in the program for you, or if it simply something that you are curious about - why did you find this question interesting and important? Explain your question and write it down in the Zoom chat (as your group will be coming back to it later). Note that the question should be something that you thought of yourself - not an exercise that you’ve read in the learning resources.

Right after you share your question (without anyone trying to answer it yet), you should nominate the next learner to speak.

Each learner should aim to talk for 1-3 minutes during this section. Exact time will depend on how many learners there are in total during the stand-up - the more students there are, the closer to 1 minute it should be. If there are very few learners (e.g., 8 or less), a learner can talk even longer than 3 minutes at this part of the stand-up.

This section is meant to make the stand-ups more engaging and to give every learner regular opportunities to deepen their understanding of the content that they are learning. Talking about what you have learned is an opportunity to test your understanding and get feedback about it – we recommend trying to explain the parts that you found the most difficult. Remember – there’s absolutely no downsides to making mistakes in your explanations. Quite the opposite – if you make a mistake, the STL or other learners will have a chance to give you further context and to correct your misunderstandings. Talking about the topics that are relevant for you is how you will help the STL to help you. Furthermore, when you know that you will need to explain a concept to someone, it is usually much easier to remember it better.

The sharing of an interesting question is meant to make you more conscious about various opportunities for curiosity in your learning. A great specialist should constantly search for things that they do not know yet and notice them when they come up – this is how you continue improving and stay up-to-date in your field. Once you start looking for such questions (whether during studying of materials or working on projects), you will notice that there are plenty of them at all times.

If the learner is too quick with their update and does not provide enough detail, the STL may ask the learner to expand. If the learner has nothing relevant to say still, or just responds with a “report” such as “I was reading chapter X of book Y and did quizzes for sprint Z” without explaining what they’ve learned in more depth, the learner will not be marked for attendance. A general rule of thumb is as follows: if you just list topics or resources, this is not what is expected of you. Instead, you are expected to show your understanding of something new – e.g., explaining in your own words what linear regression is and where it can be used (if you were learning about linear regression).

Part 2: STL Sharing

Once all learners have taken their turns talking, the STL will share something very similar as well:

1. A short description of a task that they were working on last week, talking about their thought-process when solving it or just a general insight from their career.

2. A question that they thought of during last week to share with the learners. Similarly to learners, the STL will describe why the question is interesting and write it down in the Zoom chat.

This part is meant to allow learners to get a regular glimpse into how the work of a specialist might look like. Similarly to learners, the STL should take up to 3 minutes.

Part 3: Questions & Discussions

After everyone is done sharing their insights and questions, the STL will start reading the questions in the Zoom chat. For each question, the STL will first ask the learners to share their possible answers. Next, the STL should encourage a JTL (if there is one who has joined from a different group) to answer the question as well. Finally, the STL should add any additional insights that they have regarding the question. If there are any follow-up questions, the group can discuss it further. the Once a question has been answered fully this way, everyone should move to the next one, until all questions are answered.

Finally, once all the questions have been answered and if there is time left, everyone can engage freely in any further discussions. Learners can also ask additional questions if they need any further help.

Before the meeting ends, an STL is encouraged to copy all the questions that were written in Zoom chat and post them in the Discord channel of that batch. This can be particularly interesting for learners who have not joined that stand-up but who still want to test their knowledge and gain inspiration for some topics to explore.

Preparing for the stand-up

Initially, it might seem that such structure of stand-ups will require a lot of preparation. While it is true that some preparation is necessary, it might be much less than what you might think! The preparation should ideally be a part of your regular learning strategy that you would do regardless of whether there are stand-ups or not.

The importance of notes during learning

A great strategy we recommend for your learning is taking structured notes as you go through the learning resources and your projects. Not only will this allow you to revise things more quickly by allowing you to look at your summary notes, but it also means that you will always have a summary for yourself that you can share during the stand-up each week!

Similarly, the requirement to bring a question to stand-ups is meant to encourage learners to be more conscious of the questions that they encounter while learning. Not only that, since the learners need to share whether they think the question is crucial for their learning or not, the group practices a very crucial skill – their ability to directly their learning towards the most important topics. Since all IT fields are extremely vast, it’s quite easy to go down “rabbit holes” of certain topics and not notice that you are spending a great amount of time for something that might not bring that much benefit at that point of your learning.

The secret to good participation

The secret to being great at stand-ups is to actively listen and respond to others – you want to find opportunities for teamwork during stand-ups. For example, if somebody is struggling with a topic that you have already mastered - offer to have a 1-1 session with them after the stand-up. If someone describes a question that you might be able to help them with - take a chance and try to answer it. Similarly, be aware of who has already gone through the topics that you are still working on, so that in case you do get stuck, you know who to ask directly. Having an up-to-date understanding of what everyone is currently working on and utilizing this knowledge to promote useful interactions is one of the great benefits that effective participation in stand-ups can offer.

Alternative stand-up structures

The described format is what a default stand-up should look like. In some cases, an STL might choose to have a stand-up of a different format. A common example is the stand-ups during the first week of studies - these are usually used for student introductions. Sometimes, STLs might find ways to make stand-ups more interesting and relevant for their group, if everyone agrees on it – e.g., choosing to use one stand-up for a discussion about a particular project or a topic.