Carpentries Instructors’ meeting
- Monday, November 4, 2024
- 9:00-10:00 AM
Present:
Brooks-Kieffer, Busch, Hanson, Kisielinski, Sanderson, Wilhelm
Announcements
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Agenda
- Time Series lesson development update
- Workshop planning
- Other topics
Discussions
Time Series Lesson Development
Michelle and another AIMS project postdoc attended part 1 of Carpentries Collaborative Lesson Development Training in October. They’re developing a broadly focused lesson on time series data in R, using some data from the AIMS project on intermittent streams.
The first episode is done; they’re working on an episode on cleaning a messy dataset. Future episodes will include data manipulation and visualizing time series data in R using different packages. They’ll be developing at least two episodes and offering a trial run of the lesson before training resumes in 2025. They will be meeting with the other AIMS postdocs and offering opportunities to contribute to the developing lesson.
The training so far was useful; it emphasized identifying a target audience, creating learning objectives and exercises. Part 2 involves more focus on collaborative workflow using GitHub.
Workshop planning
January 2025: Genomics
Decided on two full days, DC-Genomics only. Leaving R for later in the semester. Caroline and another instructor TBD; various folks in the meeting were possibly available as helpers or co-instructors for short pieces of teaching.
February (?) 2025: Intro R
Brian, Michelle, and Jess are interested in co-instructing and/or helping. Looking at SWC R for Reproducible Scientific Analysis.
Other topics
Brian asked for feedback on requiring a local software install for a workshop instead of cloud or virtual machine. Lots of thoughts in the group; most supported having a cloud or virtual option.
- Learners don’t attend office hours.
- Permissions on institution-owned computers often cause problems.
- Very novice learners get derailed by things like downloading and saving data.
- Can include an option at the end of the workshop to show how to install the software. Learners who are comfortable can install their own if they want.
Notes by JBK, posted by JBK