Carpentries Instructors’ meeting
- Monday, October 03, 2022
- 9:00-10:00 AM
Present:
Albin, Brooks-Kieffer, Dwywer, Everman, Kisielinski, Koseva, Ramos, Russell, Trana, Colella, Katzer, Loecke
Announcements
Beginning with this October 2022 meeting, Tami and Elizabeth will run more of the monthly meeting in a transition period leading up to Jamene’s Spring 2023 sabbatical.
Email from Carpentries was sent out Oct. 3 about changes to Instructor Certificates. All certified instructors will retain their certification to teach any lesson; this is simply an update to the certificate itself.
Agenda
- Data Carpentry Ecology: Python 1 & 2 (9/23 & 9/30) debrief
- Data Carpentry Ecology: SQL 1 (9/16) Debrief and SQL 2 (10/21) Prep
- Update on the remaining Fall 2022 workshops
- Other topics
Discussions
Data Carpentry Ecology: Python 1 & 2 Debrief
Plus:
- Instruction delivery went well
- Finished most of material planned
- Remote computing resource was a benefit, removing issues due to access and admin privileges on different learner’s computers
Delta:
- There was some confusion about the start time (8:30) and learners did not show up until 9:00 both days
- Not all material was covered, the extra hour combined across the two days would have been helpful
- Some things in the Ecology lessons are not correct, mostly comes up at the end of the Python lesson
- Some exercises are too time consuming for the time allotted for the lessons
- More opportunities for feedback - only two learners responded to followup survey
- Around 2/3 of learners were bumped off the remote computing resource for around 5 minutes. This was likely due to maxing out the computing limits placed on the resouces. The administrators are aware of this issue and are working on fixing it for future uses. If this issue happens again, KU Libraries and KU IT.
Attendance was typical with around 13-15 people on the first workshop day and 8-9 people on the second day. The second day drop-off is not atypical.
Data Carpentry Ecology: SQL1 & 2 Debrief
Plus:
- Went smoothly
- Feedback from learners suggested the workshop went well
Delta:
- A bit pushed for time, especially at the end
- There are more exercises than necessary, cut some of these to make time for more material, but make sure that there isn’t any future material that is dependent on the output of an exercise.
- Some installation issues, needed a short pause to make sure that all learners had tools available
- Demonstrations of the live coding at the beginning of the lessons should be included to walk learners through steps. This would improve pacing and give time to test installation of tools
- Fewer people showed up than registered
Upcoming Workshops
Registration will open for all of the remaining workshops at once sometime this week (10/03).
10/14 - Spreadsheets and OpenRefine
OpenRefine had some installation issues, requires admin privileges. This is available on the remote computing resource jupyter.lib.ku.edu. This could be the way to go about the lesson, or as a backup if issues come up.
Kaylen has a work around for the admin privileges issue.
10/28 - SQL
Rob and Paul
10/28, 11/4 - R
Using remote resource, no time extension. Elizabeth and Chris are meeting to work out the details.
Future workshops:
Genomics workshops in January: Elizabeth, Boryana, Caroline, Jocelyn
- For the 2022 Genomics, we split registration 50/50 with Children’s Mercy so that Boryana could participate – this went well and certainly could be repeated. To do this, CMRI folks had ~2 days early access to the registration.
- Elizabeth will send out an email to organize planning for the genomics workshop to work out timing and instructor details.
- Remote resource for Genomics: The Carpentries supplies this for free for Genomics workshops, but instructor access is limited to ~1 week in advance for prep time, and the instances go away completely after the workshop. If the KU remote computing resource was desired for this workshop (even for instructor prep only), IT folks would need plenty of notice to clone or create a server image (including the data) and make sure that there are enough compute resources behind the scenes to function correctly during the workshop.
Notes by ERE and JBK, posted by ERE