Practice Interview

The practice interview was enlightening for me. It was interesting both to be interviewed and feel what it would be like as the student interviewee as well as then being the interviewer. As the interviewer, I learned that one needs to be flexible with the order of the questions. Sometimes the answer to one of the questions led directly into a question that I had planned for later, but it seemed like it would flow nicely if I just kept going with the same line of thought. What I thought was difficult was that I very much wanted to explain the right answer to the question! It was really hard for me to keep quiet and just let the interviewee continue with their train of thought and for me to just listen and take notes! I thought that having the interviewee draw a picture of what we were talking about went very well. This will impact my interview protocol as I plan to definitely give the starting scenario to the student and also ask them to draw a picture as we go along. I will also keep a flexible order to my questions so that we can follow the train of thought presented by the interviewee in the answer to one question that may lead into the next, etc. I will try very hard not to "lead" them along! The "trick" that I think is useful is having the interviewee draw a picture of what they are trying to explain so that I can better understand where they are going with their response.