University of Kansas Carpentries Instructors

November 1, 2021 Meeting Notes

Carpentries Instructors’ meeting

Present:

Albin, Brooks-Kieffer, Deakyne, Dwyer, Everman, Kindred, Koseva, Ramos, Zipper

Agenda

Discussions

Updates on upcoming SWC modular topics

Git: Tami and Pietro will instruct, with a goal of getting through episode 6 (pre-GitHub). As of the meeting time, 8 out of 20 seats were taken.

R: Thane and Matt will instruct. The chosen lesson is shorter with a realistic set of topics for a one-day workshop. During discussion the group discovered that it is an outdated development version of the Data Carpentry Genomics Intro R lesson material. There were concerns about directing learners to correct software install and data download instructions. Other concerns included the development pace of packages used in the lesson, e.g. dplyr. Lesson materials developed with older dplyr functionality would need a lot of time and work to bring up to date. Additional work might be needed to generalize genomics-specific examples and data for a non-genomics audience. Advice was to take the list of topics from the older lesson as a way to focus the upcoming workshop but use different lesson material such as Data Carpentry Ecology, Software Carpentry R-Gapminder, or Software Carpentry R-Inflammation. We can open registration when lesson selection is finalized.

New instructor recruitment

The group discussed ideas and outlets for recruiting new instructors. Boryana mentioned that “the gateway to instructor is helper” and suggested beginning recruiting messages by looking for helpers, not instructors. Also consider whether any past helpers have been particularly effective and engaged and start there. Potential groups for contacting new helpers/instructors included:

Jamene will supply some generic recruiting language that can be used in messages to individual instructors’ affiliate groups, if desired.

Planning for 2022 workshops

Are there topics of interest for 2022? Yes!

Notes by ERE, posted by JBK