Carpentries Instructors’ meeting
- Monday, March 1, 2021
- 9:00-10:00 AM
Present:
Albin, Brooks-Kieffer, Dwyer (guest), Kindred (guest), Koseva, Russell, Thomas, Trana, Zipper
Agenda
Discussions
Updates on Data Carpentry Social Sciences
Discussion of teaching and helping included the following advice and perspectives:
- R learners don’t know what they don’t know. They will come away with skills to keep learning.
- It’s better to cover 2 topics really well than 5 topics in a hurry.
- Watch out for R lesson materials that cover dataframe manipulation; learners can get lost in a hurry.
- Tell learners about the dataset. Pose a research question or other purpose to ground the “why” of doing a specific thing with the data.
- An instructor has been in the position of helper lately for other workshops; they pointed out that the pace of online learning was slower, with much more likelihood of distractions, connectivity issues, and other challenges.
- Do helpers need experience in the discipline to be effective? The consensus was no, as long as a helper follows along with the lesson or is familiar with the lesson material. Helpers are more familiar with computing stuff; that plus paying attention to the lesson will solve most learners’ problems (more discussion of common problems learners encounter occurred in the next section).
Tricky Helper Topics
“Tricky Helper Topics” are things we’ve found necessary to know or do during a workshop that we don’t practice regularly. In this section the group brainstormed a list of possible topics for future professional development, possibly in a segment of the regular instructors’ meeting. The list below is mostly verbatim from the shared document; Jamene will turn it into a table of topics that folks can sign up for; we can work these into upcoming meetings.
- Old versions of software or packages/libraries that don’t work as expected
- Registry keys
- File system confusion
- Zoom etiquette for breakout rooms: learners may need to enlarge their window or text so the helper can see it - also, how to enlarge windows or text in different operating systems
- Newest MacOS has changed the default shell from bash to zsh; do the shell lessons need modification as a result? One learner at Data Carpentry Genomics in January experienced problems related to this change.
- Deleting old SSL keys to solve connectivity issues. This also happened in the Data Carpentry Genomics January workshop.
- Getting programs into the user $PATH for times when a command is not found due to a weird install.
- Differences between Mac and Windows, including commands and keyboard buttons
- Git: detached head
- Git: setting the upstream argument when cloning a remote repository to a local computer. Why do this? What does it do?
- Differences between Mac Terminal, Windows GitBash, Windows command screen, Windows PowerShell; how these interact with the operating system, software, and files.
- For Windows, what are the options for a Unix-style CLI? Exploring GitBash, Cygwin, Windows Subsystem for Linux.
- Cloud storage defaults on Mac and Windows that make software installation and file paths very weird. This would be more specific to computers that learners manage themselves, rather than computers that are managed by institutional IT.
- How to contribute to a GitHub repository via pull request. This point is relevant for:
- Instructor certification tasks
- Creating a Carpentries workshop page
- Contributing to this group’s public-facing notes
Suggestions to move this professional development effort forward included:
- Prioritizing topics based on upcoming workshop topics
- Create a distinct page where we can keep Pro Tips for helpers persistent and updated (e.g.: not burying in individual meeting notes the things we learn in this series)
This agenda item also prompted a lot of discussion about the problems learners commonly encountered, with consensus that the most frequent issues are typos in commands and paths, as well as directional problems with their path (mostly not being where they are supposed to be). There was also discussion about making sure to review learners’ pre-survey answers prior to a workshop. Jamene indicated that she could improve distribution of this information.
Welcome and Q&A for guests/potential instructors
The main question in this section was, “How do helpers do their job?” Answers are listed mostly verbatim from the shared document:
- When we introduce everyone at the beginning of the workshop, helpers add their role (helper) and operating system in their Zoom screen name.
- Learners can ask for help in a lot of ways, including chatting directly to a helper who has the same OS they do.
- Many problems can be solved with chat in private DM
- Problems where the helper needs to see the learner’s screen can go to a breakout room with assistance from the Zoom host.
- Sometimes many learners have the same question; helpers can interrupt the instruction to slow or pause things on behalf of one or more learners.
- Zoom reactions and chat are critical to gauging how learners are doing.
- In-person workshops are very different in terms of helping – helpers can scan the room for facial expressions, the “right” screen on a learner’s computer. Learners also start helping each other.
Notes by JBK