Our tips and tricks for online workshop teaching

Tue, 01 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Who we are

We are Alessia, Flavia and Stefania, part of the King’s College London Carpentries Instructor Team. We run regular Carpentries-like workshops on Unix and Git (8 so far, more to come!) and we are here to share some tips and tricks with the community!

Background

Some background first. We teach our workshops online: we started doing so during the pandemic, but we found that the format suited our personal needs, so we are planning to keep them online for the foreseeable future. This also seems to widen accessibility for our participants, allowing extra flexibility (e.g., working from home, childcare, etc.). The Unix workshop is structured in 3 half-day sessions (3 hours each), plus an optional short exercise session (~1 hour); the Git workshop counts 2 half-day sessions plus an optional exercise session. Workshops are normally open to internal participants from King’s College London and the NHS trust, however, we allow external participants in some instances (e.g., Global South collaborations). We aim for about 15-20 participants per workshop (as we have found this to be a manageable number for online sessions), with the three of us instructing plus one or two helpers, if available. We take turns for leading the session (we all have favourite sessions/topics), but we can be flexible to cover for each other should the need arise. The instructors who are not teaching at a given time take care of breakout rooms (for individual help to participants), of questions in the chat, and of taking notes.

Alessia Visconti on The Carpentries

Our tips and tricks for online workshop teaching

Who we are

Background