November 07, 2022 Meeting Notes

November 07, 2022

Albin, Brooks-Kieffer, Hanson, Everman, Kisielinski, Koseva, Ramos, Nibbelink, Trana, Colella

The SOP for planning and hosting an online Carpentries workshop is now available! https://osf.io/g8jmw

Data Carpentry Ecology: Spreadsheets and OpenRefine (10/14) debrief

Plus:

Delta:

Some confusion with loggin onto the remote service for OpenRefine. After that things went smoothly
Spreadsheets lesson is very lecture-y, lots of show and tell instead of doing something together. May work better in person than online

Jamene added 2022-11-09 – comments from one of the 10/14 Spreadsheets & OpenRefine workshop helpers:

This might be a Mac-specific suggestion for the instructors because of how the windows for different programs open on the Mac, but I noticed neither instructor maximized the window they were working in, which made the spreadsheets and OpenRefine data really hard to see. They did a good job of increasing the display size of the window, but never fully maximized the window on their screen. Especially if folks only have access to one screen to split for the workshop I think it would be worth having the instructors make sure the program windows are full size while working through the examples.
The parts about adding and subtracting dates or pulling out specific parts of a date in the spreadsheets lesson were interesting, but a little confusing. I wonder if the lesson could include examples of when/why you might need to do this?
I noticed that the lesson had participants create and save a .csv file before explaining what that was or why you might want to use one. Similarly, we talked about README files in the spreadsheets lesson before talking about how to output your OpenRefine steps to json and save this in a text editor file. Text editors or .txt / .md files were never explained to the participants. We had a number of attendees indicate they had never used a spreadsheet program before. If that is the case, I wonder if we can expect them to know what a .csv or a text editor/.txt file is?

Data Carpentry Ecology: SQL 2 (10/21) debrief

Plus:

Went smoothly
Feedback from learners suggested the workshop went well
Breakout rooms were used effectively
Live coding and moving through the challenges helped move through material more quickly without leaving people behind
Got through most of the lesson material

Delta:

Data import caused some confusion. It would be helpful to go through this material more deliberately
Most of the lesson material was covered except some at the very end
Give yourself time to prep the lesson material (be kind to yourself)
About half of people registered showed up. Registration was capped at 30.

Data Carpentry Ecology: R 1 & 2 (10/28 & 11/04) debrief

Plus:

Went smoothly, RStudio remote resource worked without issues
Feedback was limited but suggested the workshop went well
No learner issues came up, learners moved through material without apparent issues

Delta:

We didn’t get through all of the plotting material planned, could have moved through the very introductory material more quickly
A lot of drop off on the second day of the workshop, would be maybe better to have a full day for the workshop instead of two half days over two weeks

Upcoming Workshops: DC Genomics

The Genomics workshop is planned for Jan 10,11,12 of 2023.
Boryana and Caroline are planning to be the main instructors. Meg and Jocelyn are interested in either helping or co-instructing.
Planning to include the Genomics material and a short RNAseq lesson developed by Elizabeth
Will be advertised to CMH, KU MB, EEB, and Anthropology
Planning to use AMIs provided by the Carpentries. These are typically available for a week before the workshop.
Workshop will be online

Upcoming Workshop: Future Plans

This is a good opportunity for new instructors to satisfy teaching requirement
Carolyn Jackson at KSU is starting to plan spring workshops and is interested in coordinating to avoid overlap
- KSU is working on lessons that adapt SC shell lessons to work with HPC: http://www.hpc-carpentry.org/
Interest in more advanced R (or other language) workshops:
- Intro to data viz: very introductory, uses google sheets, is on GitHub and contributions are welcome: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/intro-data-viz/
- Interactive Data Visualizations with Python: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/
- R and the Tidyverse for Working with Data: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/r-tidyverse-4-datasets/

Q&A and support for instructor training and checkout tasks

Kudos to Meg for finishing instructor training and checkout tasks!
People who have been certified for a while may be getting a new certificate that shows you are certified to teach any of the Carpentries lessons.
Katie is starting instructor training next week!
Checkout tasks discussion:Attend a discussion, contribute to a lesson. Signups for the discussion happen via an Etherpad. For the teaching demonstration, they can choose from any part of the lesson you choose. Scheduling discussion can be challenging because it is restricted to a certain number of people. Midwest carpentries call counts toward instructor checkout and may be easier to schedule (info above). Notes and schedule at https://pad.carpentries.org/local-us-midwest. Last monday of the month at 11am (but November 2022 meeting is 1 week early – 11/21; no December 2022 meeting). Don’t need to register in advance. If you are attending for instructor checkout, add that to your name in the Etherpad so the host knows to do the record-keeping for your attendance.
Low-traffic email list at https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/local-us-midwest
Potentially changing the frequency of teaching requirement to maintain certification.

Notes by ERE and JBK, posted by ERE