Carpentries Instructors’ meeting
- Monday, October 5, 2020
- 9:00-10:00 AM
Present:
Albin, Brooks-Kieffer, Deakyne, Everman, Russell, Trana, Zipper
Agenda
- Announcements
- Scheduling and topics for next workshops
- Identifying and recruiting new instructors
Discussions
Recorded discussion using a live shared document; link upon request if you don’t have it. These notes summarize and organize the shared document.
Announcements
- KU Data Camp canceled
- Paul and Jamene had put in a proposal for a session about The Carpentries at KU
- AIMS (Aquatic Intermittency effects on Microbiomes in Streams) project funded
- The Carpentries workshops and instructor training are components of the project
- Will increase KU’s annual instructor training seats from 6 to 15; 9 seats prioritized for AIMS grant personnel at all the partner institutions
Scheduling and topics for next workshops
Ideas
- DC-Genomics could be ready in Dec/Jan timeframe
- Last R offering was Jan 2020; time to offer again as a topic for a new instructor to get some experience.
- Looking at needs of incoming graduate students affiliated with AIMS (Fall 2021), thoughts of basic/advanced R lesson series, either as one workshop or several closely-spaced sessions. This would also be relevant before Fall 2021 - possibly during the extended Winter break.
- Interest in DC-Geospatial for AIMS and other communities (possibly further into 2021)
- Some new instructors have comfort with shell, R (self-taught), and SQL. Looking for opportunities for these folks to instruct on topics they’re comfortable with.
- Interest in DC-Social Sciences for Spring 2021
- As we add more instructors we will be able to do more topics concurrently
- Idea for one-hour intro sessions to warm people up on a specific topic before attending a full workshop. This might also help with full workshop learners who can’t or don’t attend all the sessions.
- Several instructors have goals for creating videos for different reasons:
- Getting feedback on teaching and combining various R lesson materials
- Instruction on installing and testing software for workshops - will need several participants in order to cover both Windows and Mac
- Idea to offer live office hours during certain times before workshops where people can get help during/after watching installation videos
- KU Edwards has a room dedicated to recording teaching if that’s useful. Lawrence campus Media Production Studio is available by appointment.
- Agreement to have a Dec/Jan workshop occur over 2 weeks on Wed/Fri rather than 4 weeks of Fridays as a way to address the “brain drain” between sessions.
- Other ways of refreshing learners between sessions?
- Video clips?
- Emailed exercises seemed most popular suggestion. 5 min exercise to open the program, find the files, do a small thing. Review the exercise at the beginning of the next session as an icebreaker.
Outcomes
- DC-Genomics in Dec/Jan
- Jamene will follow up with likely instructors to talk about curriculum, requirements for this workshop. We can also ask a previous instructor for input and advice.
- Carpentries indicates that AWS provisioning for this topic is available for both centrally- and self-organized workshops. See the DC-Genomics Setup page for details.
- Basic/Advanced R series over winter break
- DC-Social Sciences in Spring semester
Identifying and recruiting new instructors
- KU has 6 seats for 2020/21 that aren’t allocated to AIMS
- Balancing graduate students / postdocs / staff / faculty is important for cohort continuity and regular injection of new ideas
- Idea to reserve these seats for BIPOC KU affiliates; suggestions for getting started?
- KU SACNAS chapter; SACNAS has an Opportunities Board for posting opportunities
- Offer one or more seats for Haskell?
- Haskell is also an AIMS partner
- Also is now a full KanREN member, so connectivity in Haskell classrooms should be stable
- Discussion to be continued
Action Items
- Jamene will look at the academic calendar and determine some possible dates; will follow up with likely instructors for upcoming sessions.
Notes by JBK