Carpentries Instructors’ meeting
- Monday, February 1, 2021
- 9:00-10:00 AM
Present:
Albin, Brooks-Kieffer, Deakyne, Dwyer (guest), Koseva (guest), de Mello (guest), Russell, Trana, Zipper
Agenda
- Debrief from Data Carpentry Genomics
- Incentives for learner attendance
- Welcome for guests/potential instructors and Q&A
- Data Carpentry Social Sciences for Spring 2021
Discussions
Debrief from Data Carpentry Genomics
Plus
- A lot of helpers with bioinformatics and/or Carpentries experience ensured that learners could get help when needed.
- Every other day schedule seemed to help learners keep up with examples and retain learning from session to session.
- Extra two days helped with having time for all of the material.
- Excellent learner retention over the six sessions.
- AWS as common platform for all learners, helpers, and instructors helped prevent most OS-related confusion and software installation problems.
- Pacing of the lesson materials was really good, according to learners, helpers, and instructors.
- Instructors did a great job pausing to allow time for help and for learners to catch up.
- Data pipeline and genomics-specific R content were praised by learners as being very relevant for their learning goals.
- Very few connection problems with Zoom or AWS.
- Continued practice of helpers, instructors, and host changing Zoom screen name to include role and primary OS.
- Fairly smooth use of breakout rooms when needed.
- Dedicated notetaker in Etherpad.
- Use of Etherpad for exercises that would have occurred in small discussion groups in an in-person workshop.
- Regular breaks.
- Helper orientation meeting in December went well; was attended by most helpers and AWS was available for testing.
- The Carpentries granted early access to AWS instances for instructors and helpers to get familiar with the platform and how to connect.
Delta
- High no-show rate for this workshop - about 50%.
- In some sessions helpers outnumbered learners, and all sessions had a high learner:helper ratio (generally not a bad thing, but potentially a waste of helper time). With AWS limiting OS and software install issues, we could have gotten away with fewer helpers.
- In early sessions, multiple helpers sometimes piled on to a learner question. This resolved itself in later sessions as helpers started posting publicly in the chat that they would help the learner.
- Feedback after the fact that some learners felt shy about asking for help even late into the workshop.
- Zoom update radically changed participant nonverbal feedback; new Reactions feedback isn’t persistent, making it difficult for instructors and helpers to read the room for pacing and help.
- No learners attended software installation office hours prior to the workshop.
- Participation in the daily anonymous Qualtrics survey (replacement for daily sticky note feedback) dwindled over the six sessions.
- One learner who had connection issues needed help deleting stored SSL keys in order to keep connecting to their assigned AWS instance. A helper was able to assist, but this is a potential issue that more of us need to know how to fix.
Lessons to carry forward
- Discussions about helpers and help in online workshops resurrected a conversation from the 2020-07-24-ku-online debrief about pre-assigning a small group of learners to one helper as their primary contact.
- High no-show rate prompted discussion about reinstating a workshop deposit.
- Practice with new Zoom participant feedback and check settings to try to get persistence.
- Include “tricky helper topics” discussions in instructor meetings to teach and learn technical nuances of giving help (e.g.: deleting stored SSL keys).
- Keep every other day schedule in mind when scheduling future workshops.
Incentives for Learner Attendance
The high no-show rate for DC-G prompted some conversation about learner incentives. Paul noted that OU is talking about offering completion certificates after a Carpentries policy change. Read The Carpentries statement on certificates in the Carpentries Handbook. Questions about certificates included:
- What would the certificate say, since learners won’t be proficient at the end of a workshop?
- Completion would probably involve some oversight.
Other learner incentives discussed included stickers or other Carpentries swag. People love stickers. It’s possible that swag would work better for in-person workshops. We also discussed reviving the workshop deposit, which we used in 2018 and part of 2019. The deposit was $40 at the time; these conversations leaned toward a smaller deposit of $20 or $10, especially for an online workshop.
Welcome and Q&A for guests/potential instructors
The group chatted with guests who are already registered or are considering Carpentries instructor training. Current instructors talked about what brought them to The Carpentries. Guests asked what instructor training is like, with answers from those who have more recently gone through it:
- Two days of training:
- Does not include training on lesson materials
- Training is on pedagogy and learning theory
- Training is scheduled with The Carpentries
- Sessions are held online
- Training workshop is followed by a three-step checkout process:
- 5 minute teaching demo
- Contribute to Carpentries lesson material via GitHub
- Participate in a Carpentries community conversation
- Practice time for checkout tasks is available during instructor training sessions
- 3 months to complete checkout tasks; extensions are available
- Checkout tasks must be scheduled with The Carpentries
Data Carpentry Social Sciences for Spring 2021
Paul has been planning for R lessons by comparing the Software Carpentry R for Reproducible Scientific Analysis lesson with the Data Carpentry Social Sciences Data Analysis and Visualization with R for Social Scientists lesson. It’s likely that he’ll pick and choose from his preferred pieces of both lessons; this is normal for Carpentries instructors and occurs at their discretion when preparing for a workshop. Tami also has other instruction obligations and wants to be sure there’s time to prepare. A separate planning meeting will likely happen this month.
Notes by JBK