Carpentries Instructors’ meeting
- Friday, November 1, 2019
- 1:00-2:30 PM
- Watson 455 and Zoom
Present:
Brooks-Kieffer, Deakyne, Trana
Agenda
- Announcements
- Recap 10/31 bystander intervention training
- Debrief recent instructor training
- Check in on checkout tasks - support, practice, suggestions?
- Revisit 2020 workshop schedule
- Learning the host/organizer role
Discussions
Announcements
- Boryana is departing KU in November. We will miss her and hope to lure her back for a workshop every now and then.
- CarpentryCon 2020 has been announced for June 29-July 1, 2020, at the University of Wisconsin Madison. This will be the second global Carpentries community meet-up. 2018 took place in Dublin and 2021 is scheduled for South Africa (no announced city yet), so Madison is a relatively convenient destination from Lawrence. The call for proposals is still open, so if you need to be on the agenda to get travel funding, consider putting in something in any of the three categories.
Bystander Intervention training
Several folks from the group were able to attend the Bystander Intervention Training on October 31, facilitated by Dr. Blair Schneider. In terms of how similar this session was to training offered by other offices at KU, it seems to share many basic elements, but uses scenarios, research, and examples that are specific to academic departments and research groups, particularly those in STEM disciplines. As the group grows, we can be intentional about scheduling repeats of this session.
Debrief recent instructor training
This item was tabled.
Check in on checkout tasks
Matt offered an update on blocking off time to take care of his checkout tasks. Paul asked for an estimate on how much time he should expect to spend on the whole process of instructor training and checkout. While instructor training is 16 hours over 2 days, checkout varies based on the person’s comfort with lesson topics, experience with issuing GitHub pull requests, and desired prep time for the teaching demo. Jamene emphasized that other instructors in the group can sit in for a practice teaching demo or offer advice on picking an area of a lesson for contribution.
Revisit 2020 workshop schedule
We talked about the possibility of adding a summer workshop to the existing January/August schedule, but came to no conclusions. Matt pointed out that Python has become a hot topic in IT Security and Networking and that January or summer workshops would work better for many staff than an August workshop. In the absence of a critical mass of instructors, we tabled extensive discussion of this topic. A January 2020 workshop is the most time-critical; Jamene will follow up via email with the entire group.
Paul asked about helping at one or more workshops prior to instructing a workshop. Both Matt and Jamene agreed that this was a good idea in order to experience a workshop from the inside, get a sense of how it flows, and interact with learners to understand what questions and issues commonly arise.
Paul also asked if The Carpentries requires its members to offer a certain quota or distribution of workshop topics over the course of a year. It’s a good question, and there is no such requirement. As a member institution, we can self-organize as many or as few workshops as we want and offer as many or as few topics as we have instructors and helpers to cover.
Learning the host/organizer role
This item was tabled.
Notes by JBK