Carpentries Instructors’ meeting
- Monday, February 3, 2020
- 9:30-11:00 AM
- Watson 455 and Zoom
Present:
Albin, Brooks-Kieffer, Deakyne, Everman, Russell, Trana
Agenda
- Announcements
- Checkout tasks & instructor training scheduling
- January 2020 workshop debrief
- Ideas for next workshop
Discussions
January meeting?
The January meeting was canceled. February was the first meeting of 2020.
Announcements
- 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). Registration is open; there are options for financial aid.
- The Carpentries hosts community calls with other instructors on a regular basis. These are a nice way to prep before a workshop and debrief after a workshop is over. Find the schedule on the Community Calendar or sign up for a call on the Community Discussions Etherpad.
Checkout Tasks and Instructor Training
One attendee reported that checkout tasks should be completed by the end of February. A couple of people are planning to attend instructor training in April.
January 2020 Workshop Debrief
Tami and Elizabeth taught Bash, Git, and R for a Software Carpentry workshop on January 15-16, 2020 (https://kulibraries.github.io/2020-01-15-ku/). After reviewing the workshop pre- and post-survey results, we discussed the plus/delta feedback:
- Workshop space:
- + Tables with individual screens were really appreciated by instructors, helpers, learners
- + Fewer learners and more space helped the workshop feel calmer than 2019-08-20-ku
- Δ Presenter podium didn’t allow for split screen; needed to use two computers or paper notes to see notes privately and share screen with the room.
- Δ Lack of lapel mic left instructor stuck at the podium mic or learners straining to hear when the instructor moved around
- Teaching and helping:
- + Tami: didn’t let confusing spots in the lessons tangle up her explanations
- + Tami: happy with how far into the lessons she got; of course would have liked to have covered more
- + Elizabeth: felt that her second day went more smoothly, especially after she reframed day 2
- + Casey: felt that instructors seemed more comfortable and sessions went more smoothly than past workshops; instructors seemed well-prepared
- + R lesson did not get bogged down in path problems; possibly because sample data was moved out of ku-swc-files onto the Desktop?
- Δ Elizabeth: felt she could have covered more than she planned; a function of the number of learners in the room
- Δ Remember to eat and wear comfortable shoes
- Δ Get over the assumption that learners understand directory structure; teach this explicitly and refer to the directory structure handout
- Δ ku-swc-files directory (stems from the
git clone exercise to pull down all the sample data) may add complexity to the shell lesson. R lesson didn’t seem to have as many path problems. Maybe pull shell lesson materials out onto the Desktop, too?
- Δ Casey: in the shell lesson, learners get lost; explicitly teach the concept of the Home directory
- Δ Shell lesson: Do a brief active learning activity at the beginning for learners to draw their directory structure; would make it easier to navigate the handout later on
- Δ R lesson: Opportunity to reinforce the Git lesson if providing notes on R via GitHub; assuming notes don’t change much between prep and delivery, do
git clone together at the end of the second day or at least put the command and path into the Etherpad
Ideas for next workshop
We have not offered a Python-flavored workshop in over a year; it’s probably time. Matt indicated that he is game. In order to not have to wait until a break in classes, we kicked around the following ideas:
- Hold one lesson per Friday for a month, as Oklahoma State has done, e.g.: 2019-11-01-okstate
- No scheduled classes on Fridays, so this may be an easier day during the semester to offer workshops that don’t conflict with classes
- Concerns / awareness about scaffolding from one lesson to the next; intentionally bringing people back into the content as the month progresses
- Suggestion to try recording the session so learners who had to miss something could catch up on their own (would need a room set up to record - see thoughts on recordings below)
- Because of spring break in March, April seems like a good time to try this out
Action items
- Jamene will get in touch with Oklahoma State to find out how they run registration for a month-long workshop
- Jamene will look for rooms that are available in April; bonus if lecture capture or recording are available
- Considerations on recording include captioning or transcript to be ADA compliant
- Recording of a live classroom event may be a bit chaotic for watchers later on
- Possibility of conducting controlled recordings for all Software Carpentry lessons? Considerations include:
- Ability to caption one recording per lesson
- Cover the whole lesson without live learners “interrupting” the teaching
- Ability to distribute video with handouts and exercises as a package
- This sounds like a project; would involve a lot of time for our instructors to prepare for and schedule the recordings
- At KU, the Media Production Studio is the most likely partner
Notes by JBK