September 29 & October 1 & 3, 2025
1:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Instructors: Vanna Hay, Caroline Kisielinski, Ph.D, Brian Sanderson, Ph.D
Helpers: Taylor Conway, April Friedl, E Durham, Jamene Brooks-Kieffer
This is an in-person workshop on KU's Lawrence campus. Registration is available through KU Libraries. Registration will remain open until the workshop reaches capacity.
The Carpentries project comprises the Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and Library Carpentry communities of Instructors, Trainers, Maintainers, helpers, and supporters who share a mission to teach foundational computational and data science skills to researchers.
Want to learn more and stay engaged with The Carpentries? Carpentries Clippings is The Carpentries' biweekly newsletter, where we share community news, community job postings, and more. Sign up to receive future editions and read our full archive: https://carpentries.org/newsletter/
Software Carpentry aims to help researchers get their work done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic research computing skills. This hands-on workshop will cover basic concepts and tools, including program design, version control, data management, and task automation. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.
For more information on what we teach and why, please see our paper "Best Practices for Scientific Computing".
Who: The course is aimed at graduate students and other researchers. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.
Where: Price Computing Center Auditorium, 1001 Sunnyside Avenue, Lawrence, KS. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps. What3Words location: ///stiff.skills.moving.
When: September 29 & October 1 & 3, 2025; 1:00 pm - 4:30 pm Add to your Google Calendar.
Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed below).
Accessibility: We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. The workshop organizers have checked that:
We are dedicated to providing a positive and accessible learning environment for all. We do not require participants to provide documentation of disabilities or disclose any unnecessary personal information. However, we do want to help create an inclusive, accessible experience for all participants. We encourage you to share any information that would be helpful to make your Carpentries experience accessible. To request an accommodation for this workshop, please fill out the accommodation request form. If you have questions or need assistance with the accommodation form please email us.
Glosario is a multilingual glossary for computing and data science terms. The glossary helps learners attend workshops and use our lessons to make sense of computational and programming jargon written in English by offering it in their native language. Translating data science terms also provides a teaching tool for Carpentries Instructors to reduce barriers for their learners.
Workshop Recordings: Carpentries workshops are designed to be interactive rather than lecture-based, with lessons that build upon one another. To foster a positive online learning environment, we strongly recommend that participants join in real time. As a result, workshop recordings are not recommended and may not be available to learners.
Contact: Please email jamenebk@ku.edu or emdurham@ku.edu for more information.
Roles: To learn more about the roles at the workshop (who will be doing what), refer to our Workshop FAQ.
Everyone who participates in Carpentries activities is required to conform to the Code of Conduct. This document also outlines how to report an incident if needed.
We will use this collaborative document, called an Etherpad, for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.
Please be sure to complete these surveys before and after the workshop.
| Before | Pre-workshop survey |
| 1:00 | Intro to the Unix Shell |
| 1:30 | Files and Directories |
| 2:00 | Pipes and Filters |
| 2:30 | Afternoon break |
| 3:00 | Loops and Shell Scripts |
| 4:15 | Wrap-up |
| 4:30 | End Day 1 |
| 1:00 | Intro to Git |
| 2:00 | Tracking Changes |
| 2:30 | Afternoon break |
| 3:00 | Exploring History and Ignoring Things |
| 4:15 | Wrap-up |
| 4:30 | End Day 2 |
| 1:00 | Intro to GitHub |
| 2:00 | Issues and Pull Requests |
| 2:30 | Afternoon break |
| 3:00 | Collaborative Workflows and Project Governance |
| 4:00 | Workshop Wrap-up |
| 4:20 | Post-workshop Survey |
| 4:30 | Workshop End |
To participate in this Software Carpentry workshop, you will need access to an up-to-date web browser. We will access the Unix Shell and Git through remote computing instances and GitHub through a browser. You do not need to install anything on your computer, but you will need to create a free GitHub account if you don't already have one.
We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.