Carpentries Instructors’ meeting
- Monday, December 6, 2021
- 9:00-10:00 AM
Present:
Albin, Brooks-Kieffer, Deakyne, Dwyer, Everman, Kindred, Koseva, Ramos, Russell, Thomas, Trana, Zipper
Agenda
- Asynchronous voting on 2022 meeting schedule
- Debrief on Fall 2021 workshops
- Spring 2022 workshop schedule
- Idea for a listserv
Discussions
2022 meeting schedule
Folks voted before and during the meeting; Jamene looked for consensus and sent a recurring appointment for 2022.
Debrief on Fall 2021 workshops
R:
- + Pace was great; instructors did a good job of keeping everyone together. Thane did a good job weeding out some extra introductory content so there was more space for visualization and SQL
- + Learner engagement was high; lots of questions in the chat and evidence that learners were completing the exercises.
- Some folks knew learners in this workshop and reported that they mentioned good experiences, were able to learn new stuff, and even known novices were able to keep up with the instruction and the exercises.
- + Big plusses for the amount of visualization information there was time/space to cover in the afternoon.
- + Lots of praise for Thane’s practice of demonstrating looking up each new R command using help syntax in the Console; Matt tried to keep this going during later episodes.
- + Appreciated the deep R knowledge on hand among the helpers
- Δ More helpers than necessary, especially in the afternoon; this point generated a discussion about strategies for determining the “right” number of helpers for a workshop:
- Don’t want to discourage helpers from helping; also want them to feel like they’re able to contribute during a workshop
- Depends on the workshop and the engagement; experiences vary widely depending on the learners.
- Online vs In-Person can make a difference, but not in the obvious ways. Helping in-person means mostly not doing own work since need to pay attention to learners’ faces, sticky notes. Helping online means can maybe do low-demand things in the background while watching the chat and listening to the instruction.
- Think about the topic when deciding how many helpers are needed: Python tends to bring up ALL the weird computer and installation issues, where R is fairly straightforward. Shell can also be an odyssey for novices, especially early on, getting the shell launched on their computer.
- Suggested improvement to helper sign-up: include workshop time blocks, checkboxes or columns for “I’m willing to take notes in the Etherpad” or “I’d like to leave early if there are enough people”
- Suggestion to collect helper data, e.g. how many questions answered, on what topics, to help determining an optimum number of helpers.
Fall 2021 modular workshop model:
- + Modular is the way to go for online workshops; two full days online is horrible. Lots of comments about comparative ease of scheduling one half or full day compared to two full days.
- + R lesson went really well in 1 day; other topics didn’t fare as well (see Deltas below)
- Δ Instructors are looking forward to resuming in-person workshops, while recognizing the convenience of online events. This point generated a discussion about in-person only vs. hybrid workshops:
- Some folks have a strong dislike of hybrid for learning; it’s a challenging environment to learn and teach in
- If hybrid, need specific groups of helpers (online and in-person), plus a liaison to the online learners. Helper ratio would need to be higher.
- The room chosen for a hybrid workshop would be really important; the room tech can make or break a hybrid event.
- Δ Python, Shell, Git too much for their allotted time:
- Python installation and setup always causes problems. Matt interested in a Python lesson with a similar pace to the recent R lesson; does this exist?
- Shell really needs a full day or part 1/part 2 in order to get to the good stuff - the reasons shell is a powerful tool.
- Current pace requires cutting all of the Nelle story out, which also removes the “why shell?” context
- Very difficult to cut intro stuff because shell is so foreign to novices
- OU Libraries teaches an intermediate shell lesson; this material is in the Carpentries Incubator
- Git also needs a full day or part 1/part 2; it’s very difficult to get to any collaboration content or other uses for GitHub.
- Concern that we are advertising falsely when we promote the workshop as a place to learn more about GitHub, knowing that we’re unlikely to be able to get there.
Spring 2022 workshop schedule
Learners who got a lot out of a workshop want the next level - maybe an intermediate series for all the topics in Spring 2022? Discussed ways to identify or create list of competencies for intermediate learners; DC-Geospatial workshop in August 2021 was a good model for this.
In very rough terms, a Spring 2022 schedule looks like:
- February: DC-Genomics (BK, ERE)
- March: Data visualization of some description, possibly in collaboration with Haskell (RR)
- Spring undetermined: Shell in conjunction with OCR using command-line tools (KD)
- Late Spring or Fall: Intermediate R with RMarkdown and Git/GitHub integration, or RMarkdown + GitHub mini lesson (SGT, SZ)
- Undetermined: Some topic in person (MD); perhaps Shell + Docker
- Undetermined: Jekyll (KD)
Idea for a listserv
Problem of potential learners wanting to be notified of an upcoming workshop; individuals needing to remember to contact them when more workshops in their topic of interest are scheduled. A listserv could be a way to address this.
SACNAS uses a Google Group for similar communication; has saved lots of headaches.
Question of whether the listserv would be for one-way announcements or two-way communication, e.g. could learners send follow-up questions to the listserv after a workshop and expect answers?
More investigation needed.
Notes by JBK