Erin Becker on The Carpentries

RFP: Consultancy support for the Open Science Coalition

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Five leading open science organisations – The Carpentries, OLS, rOpenSci, pyOpenSci, and PREreview – are seeking an external consultant or group to facilitate several activities over the second half of 2026. Selected consultants will continue the organisational alignment and collaboration work previously announced in late 2025.

This work has three strands:

Facilitation: co-ordinating between the five groups during the grant-writing period, possibly coordinating the grantwriter and governance facilitator as well.
Governance: Creating ways of working between the five organisations (Pitches by invitation only). This would occur during the grant-writing period and possibly after.
Grantwriting: to lead-author our multi-funder grant pitch. We expect that this grant will be pitched to multiple funders to co-fund, and may involve more than one phase, e.g. discovery phase, pilot phase, and implementation phase, over multiple years.

We would be willing to consider pitches that cover multiple roles at once.

The Carpentries Forms a Strategic Partnership with datocracy AI

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Two Organisations. One Bold Mission.

The future of AI must be shaped by people who understand it and have the skills to question it. Today, datocracy AI and The Carpentries are announcing a partnership that puts people at the very centre of the future of AI training and usage. We are proud to announce this collaboration, as a meeting of two organisations with deeply complementary missions, and a shared understanding that knowledge, when made accessible and equitable, is powerful.

Welcome to our Newest Lesson Maintainers!

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that our most recent cohort of Lesson Maintainers have completed onboarding and are ready to support lessons across The Carpentries curricula, including our newest Lesson Program, HPC Carpentry. Seventeen new Maintainers participated in the two hour onboarding, with the following goals:

Orientation to The Carpentries goals and vision for lesson maintenance.
Getting connected with other Maintainers and the overall Maintainer community.
Developing skills for creating a positive environment for all contributors.
Becoming familiar with the key components of the lesson template.
Learning how and when to elevate issues to the Curriculum Advisory Committee.

In addition to the onboarding sessions, Maintainers are eligible to join one of our upcoming GitHub for Maintainers and Lesson Developers professional development courses, equipping them with the skills they need to maintain an open source project effectively.

Applications Now Open for Carpentries Instructor Trainer Training Starting July 2026

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Do you look back fondly on your Carpentries Instructor Training and think, “I would love to teach that!”?

Do you want to help people learn to be more effective teachers, while continuing to develop your own teaching skill through regular engagement with our Instructor Training curriculum?

Maybe you are looking for another way to get involved and give back to The Carpentries community.

If any of these describe you, consider joining our vibrant community of Instructor Trainers. We are pleased to announce that applications are now open for anyone wishing to become a Carpentries Instructor Trainer!

Build Data Skills in Your Community: Become a Carpentries Partner

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Build Data Skills Where You Work

Modern research, teaching, and professional practice increasingly rely on data and computational skills. Yet many people are asked to work with code, data, and collaborative technologies without formal training. The Carpentries helps address this gap.

Through hands-on workshops, Instructor training, and collaborative lesson development, our global community supports organisations in building practical skills for working with data and code while fostering a culture of open, reproducible research.

Stories from The Carpentries Community: Why Skill-Building, Teaching, and Community Matter for Open Science

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A Community Teaching Data Skills for Open Science

The Carpentries is a global community dedicated to teaching foundational data and computational skills for research and professional practice. Our programs help people work more effectively with data, code, and software while supporting open, reproducible science.

Today, the community includes:

5,405 certified Instructors
185 Instructor Trainers
4,965 workshops taught in 72 countries

But these numbers only tell part of the story.

The real impact of The Carpentries comes from the people who teach, learn, and collaborate through our programs. Through our Partnership program, organisations join a global network focused on building local capacity for teaching data skills.

Why Partner with The Carpentries? Building Skills, Community, and Global Impact

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Why Partner with The Carpentries

Across research institutions, universities, and libraries worldwide, the need for strong data and computational skills continues to grow.

The Carpentries Partnership program helps organisations meet this need by building sustainable training capacity within their own communities. Rather than relying solely on external training, partners develop local and regional Instructors, contribute to shared lesson materials, and connect with a global community of educators and researchers.

Through this model, organisations are able to strengthen both their technical capacity and their teaching culture.

Our People, Our Impact: How The Carpentries Community Multiplies Skills Worldwide

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Our People, Our Impact

The impact of The Carpentries has always been rooted in people.

Across universities, research institutes, libraries, and organisations around the world, community members are working together to build capacity for teaching foundational data and computational skills. At the center of this work are the people who teach, maintain, and build community around the programs that make our workshops possible. They then go on to introduce The Carpentries to other individuals at their institutions and empower them with the same skills. This is where the multiplier effect begins - one of the main benefits of an institutional Partnership with the Carpentries.

The Carpentries Partnership Program is Now Live!

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

After many months in the making, we are thrilled to announce that The Carpentries Partnership program is finally launching today!

This is an exciting outcome of efforts by The Carpentries Core Team and broader community to redesign our former Membership program into a program that is responsive and best meets the needs of our partnering organisations and institutions.

Over the coming weeks, we will release a series of blog posts expanding on the value of having a Partnership with The Carpentries. In this blog post we provide an outline of the service offerings that can be included in a Partnership agreement beginning today.

Join the 2026 Maintainer Onboarding Cohort!

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is preparing to onboard the next cohort of Maintainers. We are delighted that 79 of 112 existing Maintainers have chosen to continue in their role for another year. To keep the community healthy and ensure that all lessons are well supported, we are calling for volunteers to step into the role.

This year, we are also onboarding Maintainers for our newest Lesson Program, HPC Carpentry, for the first time. Read on for details!

One Year Independent: What We’ve Learned from Our Fiscal Sponsorship Transition

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 1st February 2025, The Carpentries completed its transition from a fiscally sponsored organisation to an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Over the past year, the Executive Team undertook a formal evaluation to understand how this shift has affected our mission delivery, governance, finances, and relationships with our community. This post summarises the main themes that emerged.

Being independent has given The Carpentries greater latitude to make decisions that reflect our values and long-term strategy. This has been particularly important in a changing funding landscape. Our experience navigating a major federal proposal independently, and ultimately declining an award whose conditions conflicted with our commitment to inclusivity, underscored the importance of organisational autonomy and reinforced the role we intend to play as a values-led organisation in the open science ecosystem. Our leadership and decision influenced the Python Software Foundation to also reject federal funding on the same grounds.

The Carpentries’ New Partnership Program is Launching in April!

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing the new Partnership Program

With much-valued input from our community, we have been working over the past few years on ways to improve our Membership program to meet the needs of our community’s partner organisations and institutions. After considering and engaging with feedback from our community surveys from September 2024 and again in September 2025, we are so pleased to announce that we have redesigned our Membership program into a new model called the Partnership program that can be tailored to suit varying institutional needs. Plans are underway to launch the redesigned program in April this year!

Introducing Cite This Lesson Pages to The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A new version of The Carpentries Workbench was released this month, and included several exciting new features.

Cite This Lesson Pages

Cite This Lesson pages will now be included in any lesson with a CITATION.cff file in the source repository. By displaying contributor information as a part of the lesson website, these pages will provide a lot more visibility to all the people who have made the lesson what it is. The Curriculum Team has been hoping to provide this kind of acknowledgement to lesson contributors for many years, and this is a major step towards the establishment of a regular release cycle for Carpentries lessons.

We're Almost There: Share Your Input on The Carpentries' New Membership Model

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is evolving — and so is our membership program. To remain a strong, sustainable community of practice, we are finalising a new model that reflects today’s realities, tomorrow’s opportunities, and, most importantly, the needs of our community.

Last year, many of you shared your perspectives in our 2024 member survey. Your feedback was invaluable — it highlighted where our membership program could be more relevant, flexible, and supportive. That input has guided our redesign, and now we’re ready to take the next step.

From Surviving to Thriving: A Convening to Reclaim and Sustain Open Science Communities

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Open science has transformed how research is conducted, shared, and reused. Yet the organisations at the heart of this transformation are often left vulnerable, underfunded, and disconnected from one another. To move from simply surviving to truly thriving, five leading open science organisations—The Carpentries, OLS, rOpenSci, pyOpenSci, and PREreview—are convening to chart a collective path forward. We are so grateful to The Navigation Fund for supporting this work, and invite our communities to review the full proposal online.

Become a Lesson Developer Trainer

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Do you have experience in lesson/curriculum development? Want to share that expertise with others in The Carpentries community? Interested in helping to build the Carpentries Incubator community? If so, apply to join the upcoming round of Lesson Developer Trainer Training!

What do Lesson Developer Trainers do?

Certified Lesson Developer Trainers teach The Carpentries Collaborative Lesson Development Training to community members who want to learn how to design and develop open source lessons in collaboration with others. They lead training events and join community meetings with other Lesson Developer Trainers to discuss topics relevant to the training and lesson development in general.

Building Skills with Generalist Repositories: An Update on the Carpentries + GREI Collaboration

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In late 2024, we launched a collaboration between The Carpentries and the Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI), aiming to explore how generalist data repositories such as Dataverse, Dryad, Figshare, Mendeley Data, Open Science Framework, Vivli, and Zenodo might be more intentionally woven into the data skills we teach. Since then, we’ve taken important steps toward that vision by co-creating new lesson content, running an in-person workshop, and inviting the community into a broader conversation about data sharing and discoverability.

Welcome to our Newest Lesson Maintainers!

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that our most recent cohort of Lesson Maintainers have completed onboarding and are ready to support lessons across The Carpentries curricula. Thirty new Maintainers participated in the three hour onboarding, with the following goals:

Orientation to The Carpentries goals and vision for lesson maintenance.
Getting connected with other Maintainers and the overall Maintainer community.
Developing skills for creating a positive environment for all contributors.
Becoming familiar with the key components of the lesson template.
Practicing core technical skills for lesson maintenance.
Learning how and when to elevate issues to the Curriculum Advisory Committee.

We are excited to welcome these new members to the Maintainer community and look forward to working with them, along with our many committed continuing Maintainers, over the coming months.

Announcing Withdrawal of NSF Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems Proposal

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In September 2024, The Carpentries submitted a proposal to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) Program. This project would position The Carpentries as a leading open source ecosystem and further solidify our independence as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisation.

Developing a proposal of this magnitude (1.5 million USD) involved a significant amount of preparation, from conceptualisation of the idea to navigating the complex submission process. It was the first time The Carpentries did it on our own, with our Associate Director, Erin Becker, leading as principal investigator.

Publication of The Carpentries 2024 Annual Report

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The past year’s Annual Report and Financial Statement are now available on The Carpentries website. Continuing with the approach we adopted for reporting in 2023, we have dissolved the distinction between the 2024 Annual and Financial Reports and merged both into one Annual Report, accompanied by a Financial Statement.

The 2024 Annual Report can be found on our website’s Impact page, and the 2024 Financial Statement is on our website’s Financials page.

Join the 2025 Maintainer Onboarding Cohort!

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is preparing to onboard the next cohort of Maintainers. We are delighted that 83 of 111 current Maintainers have chosen to continue in their role for another year, meaning that our need to onboard new Maintainers is not as urgent as it has been in previous years. Nevertheless, to keep the community healthy and ensure that all lessons are well supported, we are calling for volunteers to step into the role.

Teaching LLM Assistants in Carpentries Workshops, part 2

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Following our previous post summarising a pair of community discussions on the topic of teaching the use of LLM “assistants” such as ChatGPT in Carpentries workshops, here we describe the Curriculum Team’s plans to coordinate relevant updates to lessons.

Including discussion of LLMs in workshops

One key takeaway from November’s community discussions was the observation that learners are using/will use LLM assistants when learning to code, whether we want them to or not. In this context, we believe that our goal as Instructors should be to help learners develop a working mental model of how these tools can be used, the kind of task they are (and are not) suited to, and their strengths and limitations.

Teaching LLM Assistants in Carpentries Workshops, part 1

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Generative AI “assistants” such as ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot, based on large language models (LLMs), have gained a lot of attention over recent years and are impacting how people learn about and practice coding and data science. Some members of The Carpentries community have reported observing learners using ChatGPT and similar tools to assist them in and after workshops. Others have reported on efforts to educate members of their local communities about the models behind these tools, their advantages and limitations, and how to judiciously approach their use.

Happy New Year from The Carpentries

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As we begin the year, we want to reflect on our journey and express deep gratitude for the collective dedication and leadership that have propelled The Carpentries forward. This post marks a significant milestone: On February 1st, The Carpentries will become an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organisation! We have made substantial progress across our strategic priorities. We remain focused on finalising key projects, exploring new opportunities, and developing a forward-thinking strategic plan for 2026 and beyond. Our work is a testament to our community’s thoughtful collaboration and stewardship, and we are confident it will continue to advance our mission to empower diverse communities through data and software education.

Bridging Communities: The Carpentries and GREI Collaboration

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We would like to share an exciting new collaboration between The Carpentries and the Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI). This collaboration represents a shared commitment to equipping researchers worldwide with the skills and tools needed for effective data and software management, especially within the biomedical research community. GREI was launched in 2022 by the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Data Science Strategy (NIH ODSS) in the USA to foster robust data-sharing practices, recognising the critical need for researchers to make their data accessible, reusable, and impactful across disciplines. At its core, GREI supports a network of repositories designed to accommodate diverse data types, emphasising usability, discoverability, and adherence to the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles. This initiative not only provides researchers with the infrastructure to share their data but also offers guidance and tools to improve data management practices, making it easier to comply with data-sharing policies and maximise the reach of their work. By working together, The Carpentries and GREI aim to align our resources to demystify generalist repositories, enhance workflows for data submission and reuse, and ultimately ensure high-quality, well-documented deposits. But why is this effort so important, and what does it mean for our communities?

Introducing Our 2024 Cohort of Certified Instructor Trainers!

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In August, we began training a new cohort of community leaders to become certified as Instructor Trainers. These are the people who co-teach Instructor Training events, host teaching demonstrations, and participate in oversight and maintenance of our Instructor Training program as a whole. With 22 people, we are proud to say this is the largest cohort ever to join the Instructor Trainer community! Our new Instructor Trainers are joining us from universities, informatics centers, government departments, and corporations across Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Applications Now Open for Carpentries Instructor Trainer Training Starting August 2024

Wed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This blogpost has been updated to extend the application deadline

Do you look back fondly on your Instructor Training and think, “I would love to teach that!”? Do you want to help people learn to be more effective teachers, while continuing to develop your own teaching skill through regular engagement with our Instructor Training curriculum? Maybe you are looking for another way to get involved and give back to The Carpentries community. If any of these describe you, consider joining our vibrant community of Instructor Trainers!

Publication of The Carpentries 2023 Annual Report

Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that The Carpentries 2023 Annual Report is now available on the Reports page, our central resource for all reports including yearly reports, grant reports, and assessment reports released by The Carpentries.

This year we dissolved the distinction between the Annual and the Financial Reports and merged both into one Annual Report. The Annual Report provides highlights of the work the Core Team and community achieved in 2023, and also provides some priorities for 2024. It includes messages from our Executive Director, Dr. Kari L. Jordan, and from our newly-constituted Board of Directors. It also shares key financial data on our income and expenditures over the course of 2023, giving insight to our continued financial stability for supporting our mission. Additional details about our 2023 financials can be found in our Financial Statement.

Changes to support from the Core Team at The Carpentries

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, we released a blog post re-introducing to the community the nine members of The Carpentries Core Team. This comes after we recently announced the departure of seven valued members of The Carpentries Core Team and celebrated the accomplishments, heart, and vision of our legacy team members. The financial necessity of these recent changes also requires us to look closely at our workload. We must determine which of the many activities supported by our Core Team lie at the heart of The Carpentries vision to be the leading inclusive community teaching data and coding skills.

Re-introducing The Carpentries Core Team

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Until recently, The Carpentries and its community were supported by a 16-member strong Core Team, but due to financial constraints, the organisation let go of seven members of this staff cohort, reducing the Core Team members to nine. This reduction in staff has necessarily entailed a reduction in the programs and activities the team can continue to lead and support, and tomorrow, 1 February 2024, we will share what continued work for the Core Team will look like moving forward. However, we are confident about and committed to carrying forward our vision and mission; this is not the first time a small team has supported The Carpentries, and for 25 years the organisation has grown into its vision of being the leading inclusive community teaching data and coding skills.

Maintainer Community Lead: an update and next steps

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

My Time as Maintainer Community Lead - a message from Vini Salazer

The Maintainer Community Lead is a volunteer position at The Carpentries with the main goal of supporting Lesson Maintainers. I took up this role last year following the departure of Daniel Chen. Daniel did some amazing work, not only supporting the Maintainer Community, but also revamping the Maintainer Onboarding curriculum and the Maintainer Request for Comments (RFCs), a space for discussion lesson changes and the Maintainer Community in general.

Join the Genomics Curriculum Advisory Committee!

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Data Carpentry Genomics Curriculum Advisory Committee is seeking new members, including someone to serve as committee secretary. This is an exciting time to be part of the Genomics CAC, as the committee will soon be considering adoption of the Introduction to R and RStudio for Genomics lesson into the official Data Carpentry Genomics curriculum.

Curriculum Advisory Committees provide high-level oversight, vision, and leadership for a curriculum and guide large-scale updates. Curriculum Advisors meet approximately quarterly, and serve a two-year term. The Carpentries Handbook includes more about what it means to be a Curriculum Advisor.

Beta Testing an Alternative Version of R Ecology lesson

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Data Carpentry: Ecology Curriculum Advisory Committee has approved a redesigned version of the Data Analysis and Visualization in R for Ecologists lesson for beta testing. Curriculum Advisors invite the Data Carpentry community to teach this alternative version of the lesson and provide feedback, to inform their discussions as they consider formally adopting it and replacing the current version in the curriculum.

About the Redesigned Lesson

The lesson was redesigned and developed by Michael Culshaw-Maurer in The Carpentries Incubator during his tenure in The Carpentries Curriculum Team as a post-doc at CyVerse.

Welcome to our Newest Lesson Maintainers!

Tue, 02 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I am thrilled to share the news that our latest cohort of Lesson Maintainers has completed their onboarding and are now poised to provide valuable support across The Carpentries curricula. Nineteen individuals participated in the comprehensive three-hour onboarding program, which included a wide range of goals and objectives. These included gaining a better understanding of The Carpentries’ vision and goals for lesson maintenance, connecting with other Maintainers and the larger Maintainer community, and developing the necessary skills to create a welcoming and inclusive environment for all contributors. Additionally, participants gained valuable hands-on experience with core technical skills for lesson maintenance.

Apply for the current round of Carpentries Maintainer Onboarding!

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is preparing to onboard the next cohort of Maintainers. Currently we have 109 Maintainers serving across 56 core lessons. To keep the community healthy, we need to plan for offboarding people who want to step down from their current positions and finding new people to step into the role.

You do not need to be a Git expert to be a Maintainer. If you are familiar with the Git lessons from either Library Carpentry or Software Carpentry, you will have the foundation and support to learn the skills you will need as a Maintainer. The Maintainer community has a dedicated Slack channel, TopicBox list, and two monthly meetings to help support you and the lesson you are working on.

We are Hiring a Communications Coordinator. Join Our Team.

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is searching for a full-time Communications Coordinator to join our global, mission-driven organisation, and is particularly seeking applications from individuals in Mexico, Central America, South America, or Southern Africa. The Communications Coordinator will work with and serve our volunteer community - comprised of 75,000 learners, 3,400 instructors, 140 Trainers, and 100 member organisations from research institutions around the world.

This position is supported with funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Our new team member will join a diverse and engaged team of remote professionals working to spread data-driven research skills around the world. Our team values openness, honesty, fairness, and transparency as the keys to fostering trust. We believe that the individuals who make up our community are the most important part of our organisation and our strongest resource. We strive to make decisions that prioritize people first and empower the growth and success of all who are part of our organisation. We value a growth mindset in all that we do and strive to be always improving and evolving ourselves and our methodologies, being receptive to feedback, responsive, curious, and willing to learn.

Announcing our new Deputy Director of Business

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A Message from Erin Becker

I am elated to announce that Talisha Sutton-Kennedy is advancing to a Junior Team Lead role, and will now be serving as The Carpentries Deputy Director of Business. Since 2018, Talisha has brought her keen attention to detail and process-improvement orientation to the Business and Membership Teams, leading to great improvements in efficiency and confidence in The Carpentries business administration processes. In her new role, Talisha will continue to strengthen our business operations, and will consolidate our Membership processing and support services within the Business Team. Congratulations Talisha!

Introducing The Carpentries Director of Technology, Dr Rob Davey

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to welcome Dr Rob Davey to The Carpentries Core Team! Rob is joining us as the Director of Technology. In this role he will manage the technical requirements for The Carpentries’ programmatic and administrative teams to ensure that The Carpentries provides an accessible and inclusive experience for our community members. Rob will also lead The Carpentries data privacy and security efforts, and provide strategic direction for improvements to the technology stack used in our work. We are ecstatic to welcome Rob to the team!

Community Helps Add Alt Texts to our Lesson Images

Wed, 23 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In early September, Brynn Elliott, Accessibility Manager for The Carpentries hosted two Themed Discussions for the community focused on improving accessibility of our lessons through improving alt text on images. The group started off with an overview of what alt text is, why it is important, and how to add it to images in our lessons.## What is alt text? Alt text - also known as alternative text, alt tags, or alt descriptions - are a written description of the image that has several purposes. Alt text is important for accessibility, screen readers can only read text, individuals who are blind or have low vision are still able to understand the image purpose. Search engine crawlers use alt text to index data and improve search results. Images that are broken or missing can still be interpreted because text is shown in its place. Alt text may vary depending on the goal of the photo.

Announcing our new Director of Assessment

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A Message from Erin Becker

It is with great pleasure that I announce that Dr. Kelly Barnes is advancing to a Senior Team Lead role and will now be serving as The Carpentries Director of Assessment. Over the past three years, Kelly has brought her expertise in assessment and evaluation to the Instructor Training team, improving and strengthening the Instructor Training and Trainer Training programs. In her new position, she will be able to expand her reach and bring high-quality assessment to all of The Carpentries core activities - including curriculum development and maintenance, workshops, and community development. Congratulations Kelly!

Announcing our new Deputy Director of Technology

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A Message from Erin Becker

I am thrilled to announce that Maneesha Sane is advancing to a Junior Team Lead role and will now be serving as The Carpentries Deputy Director of Technology. Maneesha has been part of The Carpentries team since the very beginning - initially serving as a workshop coordinator and later moving into an infrastructure-focused role as Quality Assurance Manager. For the past 6+ years, Maneesha has served as a living example of The Carpentries values, bringing them to bear in everything she does. She brings a vast wealth of experience and historical knowledge to the organisation. In this new role, Maneesha will support the incoming Director of Technology (to be announced at a later date), and the growing Infrastructure Team. Congratulations Maneesha!

We are Hiring an Information Technology Developer. Join Our Team.

Thu, 21 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is searching for a new full-time Information Technology Developer to join our global, mission-driven organisation. The Information Technology Developer will work with and serve our volunteer community - comprised of 80,000 learners, 3,900 Instructors, 110 Trainers, and 100 member organisations from research institutions around the world.

Our new Information Technology Developer will join a diverse and engaged team of remote professionals working to spread data-driven research skills around the world. Our team values openness, honesty, fairness, and transparency as the keys to fostering trust. We believe that the individuals who make up our community are the most important part of our organisation and our strongest resource. We strive to make decisions that prioritise people first and empower the growth and success of all who are part of our organisation. We value a growth mindset in all that we do and strive to be always improving and evolving ourselves and our methodologies, being receptive to feedback, responsive, curious, and willing to learn.

Join us in Welcoming our New Maintainers!

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that our most recent cohort of Lesson Maintainers have completed onboarding and are ready to support lessons across The Carpentries curricula. Seven new Maintainers completed independent study of the Maintainer onboarding curriculum, and demonstrated completion of the following goals:

Orientation to The Carpentries goals and vision for lesson maintenance
Getting connected with other Maintainers and the overall Maintainer community
Developing skills for creating a positive environment for all contributors
Becoming familiar with the key components of the lesson template
Practicing core technical skills for lesson maintenance
Learning how and when to elevate issues to the Curriculum Advisory Committee

We are Hiring a Director of Technology. Join Our Team.

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is searching for a new full-time Director of Technology to join our global, mission-driven organisation. The Director of Technology will work with and serve our volunteer community - comprised of 80,000 learners, 3,900 Instructors, 110 Trainers, and 100 member organisations from research institutions around the world.

Our new Director of Technology will join a diverse and engaged team of remote professionals working to spread data-driven research skills around the world. Our team values openness, honesty, fairness, and transparency as the keys to fostering trust. We believe that the individuals who make up our community are the most important part of our organisation and our strongest resource. We strive to make decisions that prioritize people first and empower the growth and success of all who are part of our organisation. We value a growth mindset in all that we do and strive to be always improving and evolving ourselves and our methodologies, being receptive to feedback, responsive, curious, and willing to learn.

Welcome to our Newest Lesson Maintainers!

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that our most recent cohort of Lesson Maintainers have completed onboarding and are ready to support lessons across The Carpentries curricula. Thirty new Maintainers participated in the three hour onboarding, with the following goals:

Orientation to The Carpentries goals and vision for lesson maintenance.
Getting connected with other Maintainers and the overall Maintainer community.
Developing skills for creating a positive environment for all contributors.
Becoming familiar with the key components of the lesson template.
Practicing core technical skills for lesson maintenance.
Learning how and when to elevate issues to the Curriculum Advisory Committee.

We are excited to welcome these new members to the Maintainer community and look forward to working with them, and continuing to work with our many committed continuing Maintainers, over the coming months. If you are interested in becoming a Maintainer in the future, stay tuned for announcements of our yearly Maintainer Onboarding sessions.

Apply for the current round of Carpentries Maintainer Onboarding!

Thu, 12 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is preparing to onboard a new cohort of Maintainers! We currently have 72 Maintainers serving across 48 official lessons. To maintain healthy support for all of our lessons, and to enable Maintainers to step back from the role as needed, we are recruiting an additional 52 Maintainers for 29 lessons. Although we are not yet able to hold Maintainer Onboarding in languages other than English, we strongly encourage applications from folks interested in maintaining one of the four official Carpentries lessons currently offered in Spanish.

The Carpentries Strategic Plan: Year Two In Review

Mon, 02 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In April of 2021, The Carpentries published our Year One Strategic Plan Update.

Outlined in the strategic plan are the following six goals:

Build regional and local capacity to empower sustainable communities
Intentionally incorporate equity, inclusion, and accessibility to support a diverse community.
Provide opportunities for growth and professional development of our volunteers and Core Team.
Facilitate the creation and maintenance of relevant, high-quality, community-curated curricula.
Strengthen organisational structure and capacity to be strategic and responsive.
Advocate for our values and vision to empower more people to work with data and software.

Each of these goals carries with it specific objectives and rationale to aid us in implementing them.

Introducing The Carpentries Accessibility Manager, Brynn Elliott

Wed, 27 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to welcome Brynn Elliott to The Carpentries Core Team! Brynn is joining as our new Accessibility Manager, through funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to advance The Carpentries Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices (read announcement). We asked Brynn to share a bit about herself. Read on to learn more!

Hello!

I am very excited to be joining The Carpentries community as the Accessibility Manager. Though I am incredibly new to The Carpentries, accessibility has been at the forefront of my professional career for years.

The 2021 Instructor Training Report

Mon, 25 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The first virtual CarpentryConnect South Africa 2021 took place from 6 to 17 September. The event included 2 Carpentries workshops, 1 Carpentries instructor training event, 2 networking events, 1 learning session and 1 opening address.

The main goal of CarpentryConnect South Africa 2021 was to build capacity for workshops through instructor training and bring together newer and more experienced community members to share knowledge, network, develop new skills, and develop strategies for building strong local communities around digital and computational literacy in Africa.

Foundations of Astronomical Data Science Launch

Tue, 05 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The long-awaited Data Carpentry curriculum for working with astronomical data is now available to teach! The Foundations of Astronomical Data Science curriculum was actively developed during the COVID-19 pandemic by the Astronomy Curriculum Data Carpentry Committee (ACDC; composed of Erin Becker, Azalee Bostroem, Allen Downey, Rodolfo Montez Jr., Brett Morris, and Phil Rosenfield) and has undergone The Carpentries incubation process including two alpha workshops and two beta workshops. The first official offering of the stable curriculum will be at the summer meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) this June in Pasadena, CA. This is the first new curriculum released by The Carpentries since August 2018 and represents the first curriculum designed for intermediate learners! The curriculum is now ready for any certified Instructor to teach! Keep reading to learn more.

Announcing Our New Curriculum Advisors!

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

I am very excited to announce the formation of new Curriculum Advisory Committees to support several of our curricula!

In September 2021, we put out a call for applications to form Curriculum Advisory Committees (CACs) for seven Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry curricula. We received 36 applications, which were reviewed by previous Curriculum Advisors and Core Team members. Twenty-five individuals were invited to join, and twenty-three completed onboarding to become members of the Software Carpentry CAC and three Data Carpentry CACs (Astronomy, Genomics, and Geospatial). Three individuals were invited to join the Data Carpentry Ecology and Data Carpentry Image Processing CACs, which will form after a second round of recruitment in May. Several existing members of the Library Carpentry CAC also participated in onboarding, with the goal of bringing lesson support processes in closer alignment across all of The Carpentries Lesson Programs.

Introducing Sher!, Director of Workshops

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A Message from Erin Becker

I am thrilled to announce that SherAaron Hurt is advancing to a Senior Team Lead role and will now be serving as The Carpentries first Director of Workshops. SherAaron joined the team in 2017 in a part-time administrative support capacity. Over the past four and a half years, SherAaron has epitomized The Carpentries value of “Always Learning”, growing her teaching skills, technical abilities, and leadership skills immensely throughout her tenure with The Carpentries. I know that SherAaron will continue to lead the Workshop Administration Team with heart and confidence, and am excited to follow her as she blazes a new path for The Carpentries workshop of the future.

We are Hiring an Accessibility Coordinator. Join Our Team.

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is searching for a new full-time Accessibility Coordinator to join our global, mission-driven organisation for two years. The Accessibility Coordinator will be integrate accessibility standards and best practices across all areas of The Carpentries organisation. They will work with and serve our volunteer community - comprising 60,000 learners, 3,000 instructors, 97 Trainers, and 98 member organisations from research institutions around the world.

This position is supported with funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Learn more about CZI’s work to advance diversity and inclusion in open source.

New Prices for Workshops, Instructor Training, and Memberships

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In November we announced upcoming changes to our pricing for Centrally-Organised workshops, Instructor Training, and Memberships. The new pricing structure increases the flexibility of our Membership offerings, allowing Members to create service packages that will best serve their needs. We’ve also introduced geographically-tiered pricing, which will enable us to better serve organisations outside high-income countries. Lastly, we are starting a financial support program to offer support for organisations who are unable to pay our standard fees, irrespective of location.

Pricing Update for 2022

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries depends on revenue from memberships and workshop administration fees to support our programs and deliver quality, hands-on, effective training in more than 70 countries around the world. We launched a Membership program in 2016, and have kept our prices stable over the past five years. During this time, we have learned a lot about the expectations for a membership program from our Member organisations and the costs of running such a program for our organisation. It also became clear that our current pricing structure is out of reach for institutions outside high income countries. In January 2022, we will be updating our pricing structure to improve the equity of our programming, making it more cost-effective for institutions with limited funds. These changes are in service to our core values of Access for All and Strength through Diversity.

Transition for The Carpentries Membership Team

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Carpentries Community,

I am writing to share that Al Obayuwana (former Director of Partnership) has departed The Carpentries effective 25 October. While we are sorry to see Al go, there will be minimal disruption to the efforts of our Membership Program, which will continue to be supported by our membership team - Angelique Trusler, Talisha Sutton-Kennedy, and Erin Becker as interim Team Lead. Our membership@carpentries.org email is the best place to send questions and inquiries during this time.

Apply to become a Curriculum Advisor

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In August 2021, we announced that The Carpentries is reactivating our Curriculum Advisory program. Curriculum Advisory Committees provide high-level oversight, vision, and leadership for a curriculum and guide large-scale updates. Each Curriculum Advisory Committee (CAC) supports and is supported by a group of Lesson Maintainers, who focus on day-to-day maintenance of the lessons.

Joining one of the Curriculum Advisory Committees (CACs) is an excellent opportunity to engage with The Carpentries and be directly involved with the development and leadership of our Curricula.

Welcome to our Newest Lesson Maintainers!

Mon, 13 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that our most recent cohort of Lesson Maintainers have completed onboarding and are ready to support lessons across The Carpentries curricula. Eighteen new Maintainers participated in the three hour onboarding, using a completely updated curriculum with the following goals:

Orientation to The Carpentries goals and vision for lesson maintanence
Getting connected with other Maintainers and the overall Maintainer community
Developing skills for creating a positive environment for all contributors
Becoming familiar with the key components of the lesson template
Practicing core technical skills for lesson maintanence
Learning how and when to elevate issues to the Curriculum Advisory Committee

The 2021 Instructor Training Report

Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries Instructor Training Team is excited to release the 2021 Instructor Training Report. This report is an in-depth look at the Instructor Training program and provides an update on its successes, challenges, and growth.

Quick Facts

Instructor Training Outcomes

Trainees rate Carpentries Trainers very highly.
- The majority of trainees thought Trainers gave clear answers to questions (97%), were good communicators (97%), considerate (99%), and enthusiastic (98%).
Trainees report higher levels of ability and knowledge after Instructor Training.
98% of trainees agreed that the atmosphere during Instructor Training was welcoming.
92% of trainees agreed that Instructor Training was worth their time.
74% of trainees report an increase in motivation to learn about teaching after Instructor Training.
Trainees are very likely to recommend Instructor Training to a friend or colleague.
- Recommendation scores have averaged 8.43 - 9 out of 10 for the last five years.
81% of Trainees hear about Instructor Training through word of mouth.

Instructor Training Growth

Reactivating the Curriculum Advisory Committees

Tue, 24 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In early 2018 The Carpentries launched Curriculum Advisory Committees, to provide high-level oversight, vision, and leadership for a curriculum and to guide large-scale updates. We are now relaunching the program in order to better support our current curricula and ensure that they remain up-to-date and effective.

If you are interested in being directly involved with the development and leadership of The Carpentries Curricula, joining one of the Curriculum Advisory Committees (CACs) is an excellent opportunity.

Announcing our new Curriculum Team Lead

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A Message from Erin Becker

I am excited to announce that I have passed on the mantle of Curriculum Team Lead to Toby Hodges as of 1 June. In his role as Curriculum Community Developer, Toby has been a vital member of the team since joining us last August. He has showcased amazing leadership in the development of The Carpentries Incubator and CarpentriesLab and in the creation and piloting of Lesson Development Study Groups. Toby has been preparing to transition into this leadership role over the past few months and I have every confidence in his ability to lead the team with verve. I will remain on as a supporting member of the Curriculum Team.

Foundations of Astronomical Data Science - Call for Beta Pilot Applications

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Astronomy Data Carpentry curriculum, “Foundations of Astronomical Data Science” successfully held two alpha workshops in November 2020 and January 2021.

We are seeking community members to host and teach beta pilot workshops with the revised Foundations of Astronomical Data Science curriculum in June - August 2021. Continue reading for more information on the lessons, the alpha workshops, and to apply to host a beta pilot workshop.

The Astronomy Data Carpentry project is an endeavor funded by the American Institute of Physics Venture Partnership Fund, which was awarded to the American Astronomical Society to develop this curriculum (PIs: Azalee Bostroem, Diane Frendak, and Dr. Rodolfo Montez Jr.). The Astronomy Curriculum Development Committee, composed of Azalee Bostroem (Project Lead; University of California, Davis), Dr. Erin Becker (The Carpentries Associate Director), Dr. Rodolfo Montez Jr. (Astronomy Advisor; AAS and AIP liaison), Dr. Brett Morris (Astronomy Advisor), and Dr. Phil Rosenfield (Astronomy and Industry Advisor), were joined by lead curriculum developer, Dr. Allen Downey (Olin College), to create a two-day Data Carpentry curriculum for the astronomical community.

Announcing The Python Software Foundation Scientific Working Group grant

Tue, 06 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi, I am Vini, a Carpentries Instructor and bioinformatician based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I am very pleased to announce that my proposal “Maintenance and Development of The Carpentries’ Python Curriculum” was approved as part of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) Scientific Working Group’s call for grant requests. This call was announced in December of last year and its goal is “to advance the scope, breadth, and utility of Python for scientific work (…), with specific emphasis on maintainer / maintenance support, outreach and education, as well as improved infrastructure & documentation.”

Introducing our new Director of Partnerships

Wed, 10 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We are delighted to welcome Al Obayuwana to The Carpentries team as our new Director of Partnerships. In this role, Al will focus on further developing our Membership program, supporting current Members, and expanding our membership base across a diverse range of institutions. Al comes to us with extensive experience working with community-based non-profits. In his most recent position as Vice President of Youth and Community Development for the YMCA, he successfully established new programming and greatly expanded fundraising revenue for the organisation. We are excited to add Al’s skills in relationship-building, program development, and fundraising to the team.

Updates to Our Platinum Membership Tier

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Platinum tier is our most customisable membership type. Organisations choosing a Platinum membership have many options, in terms of both membership benefits, and in discount options available for in-kind time provided to The Carpentries. With growing community interest in Platinum memberships, we’ve updating our pricing structure to increase the transparency and equity of our membership program. A breakdown of this updated pricing structure is available on our Membership page.

Members of our team are on hand to help you in constructing a Platinum membership that best suits your organisation’s needs for training and community support. To request a meeting with our team, please send us an email.

We are Hiring Three New Team Members. Join Our Team.

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is searching for two new full-time team members, and one temporary employee or contractor to join our global, mission-driven organisation. These new roles will work with and serve our volunteer community - comprising approximately 70,000 learners, 2,500 instructors, 100 Trainers, and 85 partner organisations from research institutions around the world. See below for descriptions and links to apply.

Director of Partnerships / Deputy Director of Partnerships

We are hiring a Director or Deputy Director of Partnerships to provide planning, vision, and implementation of the partnership program and represent the needs of partner organisations in planning and strategic development. Individuals with work authorisation in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, or the United States should apply.

Introducing our new Curriculum Community Developer

Thu, 20 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Hi everyone! I cannot express how delighted I am to take up the position of Curriculum Community Developer with The Carpentries.

I am coming from a role as a scientific community manager at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). In that position - alongside fellow Carpentries community members Renato Alves, Malvika Sharan, and Aidan Budd - I worked to build and support the community of computational researchers at the institute. In one aspect of that, I worked with community members to develop teaching material on topics relating to computational biology. It is a collaborative process that I have really enjoyed, and I cannot wait to share that experience with you all now.

Design principles for the next iteration of The Carpentries lesson template

Mon, 10 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post introduces twelve design principles that will guide the development of the next version of The Carpentries lesson template. First, we provide some background and definitions. If you are more interested in the principles themselves, you can skip forward to the Design Principles section.

Background

In The Carpentries’ history (including Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry), we have learned a lot about lesson templates. We have had two main versions of the template that relied on GitHub Pages. As the community grows, we are adding more lessons through [our community-developed lessons]({{ site.url }}/community-lessons/) (The Carpentries Incubator and The Carpentries Lab) every week; and we are starting to see the limitations of our current workflow. Given changes in the tools and infrastructure, we are envisioning the next iteration of the lesson template.

Welcome to our Newest Lesson Maintainers!

Wed, 15 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are delighted to announce that our most recent cohort of Lesson Maintainers have completed their onboarding and received their badges! We had over 30 individuals participate in Maintainer Onboarding over the past month, including 8 existing Maintainers. We are excited to welcome these new members to the Maintainer community and look forward to working with them, and continuing to work with our many committed continuing Maintainers, over the coming months. We’d first like to thank several continuing Maintainers who participated in the onboarding. The insights and experience these folks were able to bring to the discussions were invaluable. Thank you Maxim Belkin, Sarah Stevens, Kat Koziar, Clarke Iakovakis, and Shari Laster!

Looking Back and Looking Forward: Scaling Collaborative Curriculum Development

Wed, 24 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In February 2018, Data Carpentry was awarded funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support creation of sustainable infrastructure and scalable processes for curriculum development and maintenance. In May 2020, our funding for this initial scaling effort wrapped up. Here we report on lessons learned, work accomplished through this funding, and where our curriculum development and maintenance sustainability efforts are headed in the next few years.

Our primary deliverables for this grant were:

Introducing our new Astronomy Curriculum Developer

Thu, 21 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are ecstatic to welcome Dr. Allen Downey as our new Astronomy Curriculum Developer! Allen’s role is supported by a grant from the American Institute of Physics. His work will focus on developing a set of 3-4 Carpentries-style lessons on data organisation, data management, interactive data visualisation, and publishing data for longevity and interactivity - targeted towards astronomers. Allen will join the team part-time over the next six months to develop and pilot test these lessons. Welcome to the team Allen!

Introducing our new Deputy Director of Instructor Training

Wed, 06 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are ecstatic to welcome Dr. Kelly Barnes to The Carpentries Team. Kelly’s role as Deputy Director of Instructor Training is supported by a three year grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for scaling and sustaining our Instructor Training and Trainer Training programs. Her work will focus on developing an assessment strategy for instructor and trainer training and working with the Trainer community to maintain and modernise our Instructor Training curriculum. She will also work with The Carpentries Instructor Training Team to scale up our capacity for instructor training by improving our workflows and documentation. Welcome to the team Kelly!

Scaffolding Installation for Online Workshops

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Installing software is hard!

If you have been involved with a Carpentries workshop (or any technical workshop!), you have probably noticed that ensuring learners have a working installation of the tools that will be used can be a significant challenge. Installing software is an acquired skill, and troubleshooting the installation process often requires some of the very skills that we teach in our workshops! Some Instructors pre-empt these issues by offering an “installation party” the evening before the workshop - however, folks who have the least experience with software installation are the least likely to recognise how challenging it can be, and therefore often the least likely to show up for these installation help events.

Announcing our new Maintainer Community Lead

Mon, 27 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that Angela Li is now serving as Maintainer Community Lead. Angela’s work in this role is supported by her home institution, the University of Chicago. She will be helping to reboot our Maintainer Onboarding program, recruit and onboard new Maintainers, and develop a sustainable way to support our Maintainer community.

Maintainers are a key part of The Carpentries community, acting as the backbone that supports our open-source curriculum and keeps our many lessons healthy. We’re looking forward to having Angela on board to support the Maintainer community in their lesson development and maintenance role. Welcome to the team, Angela!

We Appreciate Lesson Maintainers!

Thu, 19 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We would like to sincerely thank the Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry lesson Maintainers for their behind-the-scenes work that makes all of our workshops and independent learning possible.

Across our three Lesson Programs, we have 111 Maintainers, who work in teams to evaluate, respond to, and incorporate feedback and suggestions for improvement from workshop Instructors, helpers, learners, and folks who are using our lessons for independent learning. Our 111 Lesson Maintainers support our 51 official Carpentries lessons and workshop overview pages, and help provide feedback on our lesson template to guide its development.

We are Hiring Four New Team Members. Join Our Team.

Tue, 26 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is searching for four new full-time team members to join our global, mission-driven organisation. These new roles will work with and serve our volunteer community - comprised of 50,000 learners, 2,000 instructors, 80 Trainers, and 85 member organisations from research institutions around the world. See below for descriptions and links to apply.

Deputy Director of Instructor Training

We are hiring a Deputy Director of Instructor Training to support our global Instructor Training community, train and onboard new Instructor Trainers (who teach our Instructors), and develop an assessment strategy to examine the impact of our Instructor Training and Trainer Training programs.

Q3 and Q4 Project Work at The Carpentries

Wed, 25 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In May, we shared our vision and goals for our core team’s work in Q2. In this post, we lay out our accomplishments on that work, and also on our Q3 projects. There’s a lot that we’ve been working on! If you’re interested in a particular team’s work, you can navigate directly to their projects using the links below.

Business Team
Community Development Team
Curriculum Team
Instructor Training Team
Infrastructure Team
Membership Team
Workshop Administration Team

The projects we select for our quarterly cycles are designed to give us time to focus on our operational priorities (operational efficiency, accessibility, revenue generation, and compliance), while continuing to perform all of our ongoing work. Ongoing work includes supporting workshops, instructor training events, lesson development and maintenance, communications, and much more! Over the course of the quarter, we share our accomplishments and challenges with each other, stay in touch on how our individual work affects the whole team, and learn from each other.

22 Months in the Making: New Genomics Curriculum Release

Mon, 08 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

All of The Carpentries lessons focus on teaching core skills, rather than particular tools. But, as Greg Wilson says, “We have to use something” to teach those skills. Because we do use particular tools in our teaching, we frequently need to balance the need for lesson stability against the need to stay up to date with new technology.

In November 2017, Data Carpentry released a curriculum for working with genomic sequencing data. Work on this curriculum had started all the way back in 2014, and at the end of 2017 had reached a stable state where the lessons were ready to be taught by people outside of the original development group. This workshop teaches genomics researchers how to manage their data, access data from popular sequencing databases, automate their analysis pipelines by writing custom Bash scripts, and compute in the cloud. It’s targeted at complete novices, with no previous programming experience, and is designed to help research teams level-up their computational skills and get more done in less time.

Announcing the June 2019 lesson release!

Tue, 02 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

As a community committed to iterative improvement, our lessons are never done. Every day, Maintainers receive feedback and contributions to help our lessons run more smoothly, stay up to date with technology changes, and be accessible to more audiences. Despite (or maybe because of!) this constant improvement, it’s important to take the time to celebrate our progress and to give credit to the hundreds of people who make our lessons the wonderful resource they are for the tens of thousands of learners who attend our workshops and use our materials online.

36 lessons will be published, which ones will you contribute to?

Wed, 15 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries lessons continuously change and improve through individual contributions from Instructors, workshop helpers, learners, and other users of the lessons. These contributions are guided by our lesson Maintainers, who also participate in and often lead large-scale updates to their lessons. To provide tangible credit for the work done by Maintainers and other contributors, we periodically publish our lessons on Zenodo, which provides a citable work product (DOI) that contributors can put on their CV or resume. Since our last coordinated lesson release in August 2017, many Library Carpentry lessons have become stable and ready for their first release. Several Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry lessons have also had major updates during this time period and are ready to release a new version.

Genomics Workshop Pilot and BugBBQ at University of Arizona

Wed, 15 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

This February, a small group of committed community members, led by Taylor Reiter at the University of California, Davis, completed a major update to the Data Carpentry Genomics curriculum. A huge thank you to everyone who contributed! This update included significant changes to both the data set and the software used for the lessons, modernizing the workshop and keeping it relevant to researchers working in the genomics field. The new version of this curriculum is already live and will be officially published in the upcoming lesson release in June.

Announcing The Carpentries Curriculum Development Handbook

Wed, 03 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Note (2024-12-09): The Curriculum Development Handbook has been retired. Its content has been incorporated into the new Lesson Developer Handbook, the curriculum for Collaborative Lesson Development Training and other sections of the Community Handbook.

Note (2020-02-03): The Curriculum Development Handbook is contiually being developed, so the links below may change. The main page of the Curriculum Development Handbook can be found at https://cdh.carpentries.org/

A key value of community is the horizontal transmission of culture - sharing mistakes we’ve made and lessons we’ve learned so that things are easier for the next person. In our Instructor Training program, we prepare new instructors to teach existing content using evidence-based teaching methods. The spirit of Carpentries lessons, however, doesn’t lie in reproducing the script faithfully and teaching the content “as is”. Every time our lessons are taught, they’re a little bit different, as Instructors try things out, learn, and (hopefully) contribute back to the lessons so that others can benefit from their experiences. Because of the innovation of our Instructors, and the value our community places on iteration and collaborativity, The Carpentries’ lessons get stronger every time they are taught.

Growing The Carpentries Community in Africa: Hiring a Regional Coordinator

Tue, 05 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries activities in Africa have been growing through exemplary volunteer work of the community and outstanding workshop coordination and community leadership from Anelda van der Walt. We are now looking to hire a Regional Coordinator to continue this work and support the community and workshops as activity in Africa grows. This position will join our team of Regional Coordinators - read more about that group and the work they do to support their regional communities.

Job Plans, Teams, and Projects!

Tue, 12 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

During our recent in-person meeting, we thought about what we valued most in our work: teamwork and community. Themes that were discussed frequently were ‘inclusivity’, ‘growth mindset’, ‘engagement’, and ‘collaboration’. We want to be intentional in the work that we do to support and help each other grow, and to support our programs and community.

This community has grown so much over the last year! From 43 Trainers at the start of 2018 to 74 now, from 1649 Instructors to 2294 now, and with many new members of committees, task forces, and the Executive Council. There continues to be a lot of great ongoing work, as well as a need to innovate and build infrastructure that scales. The great thing about our community is we always want to do better and try new things.

Welcoming the New Community Engagement Lead

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We are thrilled to announce that Serah Njambi Kiburu will be joining The Carpentries as Community Engagement Lead, starting 11 January 2019.

Serah has over five years experience as an open data and open source advocate, and brings with her a wealth of experience in community building and coordination, in developing and implementing curricula and outreach strategies, and translating complex technical topics into content that is easy to understand. Most recently, she worked as a Developer Advocate for Open Knowledge International. Before that, she worked with Code for Africa. Through her work, she has developed a wealth of experience developing and teaching technical workshops and engaging with communities around technical training.

New and Improved Instructor Training Workflow!

Tue, 18 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Instructor Training is a primary benefit of our Membership program, serving to build local capacity for offering Carpentries workshops and spreading The Carpentries pedagogical model to other teaching environments at member institutions. In addition to bringing this training to our members, we also offer it free of charge to individuals at institutions not able to finance a membership. Through this dual model, we have trained more than 1,600 Instructors in over 45 countries around the world.

The Carpentries 2018 Annual Report

Tue, 23 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Join us in celebrating the release of The Carpentries’ first official annual report! This report provides a quick overview of our activities for the past year and a look into the coming year. It also serves to communicate the mission, achievements, and fiscal health of The Carpentries to potential members and funding organizations.

Because this report is primarily intended for people and organisations encountering The Carpentries for the first time, it highlights the history of The Carpentries and the values of our community. We believe that this report will also be of interest to our current community members. It provides an quick, graphical, and (we hope!) fun overview of the past action-packed year, along with a statement of progress toward our mission, and a snapshot of our finances over the past year. If you’re looking for a resource to share with your department head, director, or other potential ally of The Carpentries - this is it!

Curriculum Development Goals for the Rest of 2018

Mon, 22 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As we are entering the last quarter of 2018, and following up on our Curriculum Development Vision post, we want to outline plans for the rest of the year and the beginning of 2019. We plan to post regular updates on curriculum development plans as updates and calls for participation in particular activities or teaching updated materials. For each set of curriculum there are Curriculum Advisory Committees and there is an overall Lesson Infrastructure Committee. If you are interested in being involved in lesson activities, please check out the issues on any of the lessons, send an email to team@carpentries.org, or join one of the lesson-specific email lists for more information or questions.

We’re Hiring Two New Staff. Join Our Team.

Sat, 29 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is searching for two new full-time staff members to join our global, mission-driven organisation. These new roles will work with and serve our volunteer community - comprised of our 35,000 learners, 1,500 Instructors, 70 Trainers, and 75 member organisations from research institutions around the world.

Our new Community Engagement Lead will oversee The Carpentries’ efforts to develop and support our global, inclusive community - creating pathways for participation and increased communication. They will be key in developing strategies and support for local community leaders and Carpentries Champions and support our global community. They will disseminate updates about our projects and activities to diverse communities via blog posts, Twitter, and related outlets and engage with the community on discussion forums and through meetings.

CarpentryCon – Post-conference Report and Call to Action

Sun, 09 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The first CarpentryCon

From 30 May to 1 June, 2018, the first ever in-person Carpentry conference, CarpentryCon 2018, took place under the theme “Building Locally, Connecting Globally”, with a vision to bring community members together under the same roof.

The conference was held at University College Dublin in Ireland and comprised keynote talks as well as many excellent unconference sessions suggested by the community members. The unconference sessions included 12 breakout discussions, six skill-up topics, six technical workshops and many impromptu birds-of-a-feather events (see the complete program here).

Geospatial Workshop is Now Ready to Teach!

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The long-awaited Data Carpentry curriculum for working with Geospatial data is now ready to teach! As with all our newly developed curricula, these lessons are now in ‘beta’. We are actively promoting workshops and collecting information from those workshops to improve these lessons as they are taught more broadly and in different contexts. We will also be onboarding Instructors to prepare them to teach these new lessons. Keep reading for more details.

Vision and Plans for Curriculum Development with The Carpentries

Tue, 31 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries has seen a growing interest in individuals, research groups, and institutions wanting to develop lessons for their own domain of research. We are very excited by the potential brought by this growth. Diversifying our lesson offerings means we can extend our reach to new communities, and further disseminate our practices of teaching and collaborative lesson development. We also want to ensure that the lessons we offer remain as the high quality level as our members, Instructors, and learners expect. Here, we outline our vision and plans to support this growth in curricula while sustaining existing lessons and our organisation. Between now and early 2019, we will be focusing on establishing the infrastructure needed to support lesson development and scaling up our lesson offerings. Starting in January 2019, we’ll have new pathways to onboard lessons.

The Carpentries: A Joint Narrative (January 2017 - March 2018)

Thu, 28 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry merged officially on 1 January 2018 to form a new organisation, The Carpentries. In mid-June, The Carpentries held their first Executive Council in-person meeting. A report of that meeting will be published shortly.

In preparation for the EC meeting, Carpentries’ staff prepared a narrative report on the progress we have made as a joint organisation since we began to work together more closely from January 2017. Two key milestones during that time were the creation and launch of both The Carpentries Handbook and the new Carpentries website.

Social Sciences Lessons Published!

Thu, 17 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are excited to announce the initial release of a Data Carpentry Social Sciences Curriculum. This is the first Data Carpentry Curriculum to be released targeted towards researchers outside of the life sciences and provides an opportunity to reach out to new communities.

Peter Smyth has assembled the initial content for these lessons with the guidance of Rachel Gibson, Professor of Political Science at the Cathie Marsh Institute of Social Research, University of Manchester, UK. It was polished during the April 2018 Bug BBQ, and the finishing was done by the lesson Maintainers in coordination with Carpentries staff.

Updates on the new Geospatial and Social Sciences lessons

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

In December 2017, we made a call for community members to contribute to two new sets of Data Carpentry lessons, targeted towards researchers working with geospatial data or survey data for the social sciences.

There was overwhelming interest from the community in working to develop and publish these two curricula. In the past few months, six new Maintainers for the Geospatial lessons, and five new Maintainers for the Social Sciences lessons have gone through Maintainer onboarding and begun to work with their lessons. Please join our community in welcoming Chris Prener, Geoff LaFlair, Peter Smyth, Juan Fung, Stephen Childs, Tyson Swetnam, Lauren O’Brien, Janani Selvaraj, and Lachlan Deer as new Maintainers on these lessons (Chris Prener and Juan Fung will serve as Maintainers for both the Geospatial and the Social Sciences lessons), as well as Leah Wasser and Joseph Stachelek, who will be continuing on as Maintainers for the Geospatial lessons.

Welcome to New Trainers

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are excited to welcome seventeen newly badged Trainers to our community. The group recently finished their program with Karen Word and are now certified to teach new Carpentry Instructors.

Join us in welcoming Tania Allard, Anne C. Axel, Mik Black, Murray Cadzow, Mesfin Diro, Caroline Fadeke Ajilogba, Anne Fouilloux, Alejandra Gonzalez-Beltran, Claire Hardgrove, Toby Hodges, SherAaron Hurt, Senzo Mpungose, David Perez-Suarez, Juliane Schneider, Nicholas Tierney, Jessica Upani, Elizabeth Williams.

Welcome to New Trainers

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are excited to welcome seventeen newly badged Trainers to our community. The group recently finished their program with Karen Word and are now certified to teach new Carpentry Instructors.

Announcing the first joint Carpentries Bug BBQ

Thu, 08 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Bug BBQ is a Carpentry-wide event to improve all our lessons – both existing Software and Data Carpentry lessons, and new releases. We welcome contributions from the Community on all of our lessons. If you want to contribute, but you are not sure where to start, head over to the Bug BBQ website where we will highlight how to get involved.

The Carpentries are preparing to publish the Social Sciences and the Geospatial Data Carpentry curricula on Zenodo. The Social Science Lessons will be published in April, and the Geospatial Lessons in June. This will be the first publication for these lessons. We regularly publish our lessons (SWC, DC) to provide stable identifiers for polished versions of the lessons. This enables referenced discussions of the lesson materials and gives contributors a verifiable product to cite on their CVs or resumes.

Call for Code of Conduct Committee Volunteers

Thu, 08 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentries are dedicated to developing and empowering a diverse community of data enthusiasts. Whether you are an Instructor, learner, Maintainer, Mentor, Trainer, Executive Council member, Champion, or member of our Staff, you belong to this community. We are committed to creating avenues for you to contribute that are welcoming and inclusive, whether in-person or online.

Our Code of Conduct (CoC) serves a vital role in this commitment, as it outlines our commitment to provide a welcoming and supportive environment to all people regardless of who you are, or where you come from. Our CoC outlines very detailed reporting guidelines and an enforcement policy, so that, should violations occur, members of our community can rest assured that their concerns are being handled appropriately and in a timely manner.

Call for Code of Conduct Committee Volunteers

Thu, 08 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carpentries are dedicated to developing and empowering a diverse community of enthusiasts around computational methods for research and data science. Whether you are an Instructor, learner, Maintainer, Mentor, Trainer, Executive Council member, Champion, or member of our Staff, you belong to this community. We are committed to creating avenues for you to contribute that are welcoming and inclusive, whether in-person or online.

Announcing the first joint Carpentries Bug BBQ

Wed, 07 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Call for Contributions: Data Carpentry Ecology and Software Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committees

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In mid-2017, Data Carpentry piloted a Curriculum Advisory Committee (CAC) for the Genomics curriculum. The goals for this committee were to provide general oversight, vision, and leadership for the full Genomics lesson stack, to ensure that the lessons stay up-to-date with existing best practices in the field, and to continue to serve the needs of genomics practitioners attending our workshops. Genomics Curriculum Advisors met after the initial Genomics lesson publication in November to discuss proposed structural and major topical changes to the lessons and will be helping the Genomics Maintainer team to make decisions about these changes as we prepare for a second release this year.

Call for Contributions: Data Carpentry Ecology and Software Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committees

Mon, 05 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

State of the State: Instructor Checkout

Tue, 27 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This blog post is the second in a series examining the roles and contributions of the different parts of the Carpentry community. In case you missed it - read the first post in this series, about Maintainers.

Carpentry Instructors are the core of our community. Without Instructors, there would be no workshops. Because of the vital role that Instructors play in advancing the Carpentry mission, we as a community take preparing Instructors very seriously. Before becoming certified Instructors, trainees must show familiarity with our curriculum, demonstrate their teaching skills (with a focus on the Carpentry pedagogical model), and interact with the broader Carpentry community. Software Carpentry Instructors also need to demonstrate familiarity with Git and GitHub.

State of the State: Instructor Checkout

Tue, 27 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

State of the State: Carpentry Maintainers

Wed, 31 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

All of the great work that we do as The Carpentries is dependent on the hard work and creativity of our community of volunteers. Each of you plays a vital role in helping us fulfill our mission of spreading data skills and computational literacy to researchers and other professionals worldwide. Within our Carpentry community, there are a number of subcommunities of like-minded folks carrying out particular aspects of the Carpentry mission. This blog post is the first in a series focusing on one of our sub-communities - the Maintainers.

Call for Contributions: Geospatial and Social Sciences Lessons

Thu, 07 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Data Carpentry community has published two full workshop curricula in 2017, both targeted towards researchers in the life sciences. We had our first lesson release for our Ecology lessons in May, followed by the release of the Genomics workshop materials in November.

Data Carpentry lessons are domain-specific, and targeted towards helping researchers in particular domains gain the skills they need to conduct their research efficiently and reproducibly. We’re excited to broaden our reach to researchers outside of the life sciences starting in mid-2018 with the release of curricula for working with Geospatial and Social Sciences data.

Genomics Lesson Release

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Thanks to a Herculean effort from our Maintainers, the long-awaited Data Carpentry Genomics lessons have now been published on Zenodo! These lessons were originally developed through a hackathon in 2014, and have gone through several major rounds of revision since then. We had an Issue Bonanza in August and a Bug BBQ in September, with contributions from dozens of community members.

These contributions were critical to transforming the initial lesson drafts into a polished version, ready for teaching by any Carpentry instructor with a Genomics background. As with our previous lesson release, every contributor is an author, so thank you to all who have been involved!

Apply to Become a Carpentry Maintainer

Tue, 07 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software and Data Carpentry are currently accepting applications to join the lesson Maintainer team. Carpentry Maintainers work with the community to make sure that lessons stay up-to-date, accurate, functional and cohesive. Maintainers monitor their lesson repository, make sure that PRs and Issues are addressed in a timely manner, and participate in the lesson development cycle including lesson releases. They endeavor to be welcoming and supportive of contributions from all members of the community.

Apply to Become a Carpentry Maintainer

Tue, 07 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Our long-term assessment results are in!

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A discussion of learner outcomes more than six months after attending a Carpentries workshop

What concrete changes are people implementing in their computational research practices as a result of completing a Carpentries workshop?

Our long term survey report shows that two-day Software or Data Carpentry workshops are effective for increasing skills and confidence, and the adoption of reproducible research perspectives. We see gains in our survey measures for learners’ motivation to continue their learning, change in reproducible research behavior, and frequency of use of computational skills and tools. We find this very exciting, especially since a recent general survey of bootcamps and short-format trainings reports no measurable impact on skill development or research productivity.

Our long-term assessment results are in!

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website What concrete changes are people implementing in their computational research practices as a result of completing a Carpentries workshop?

Carpentries Mentorship Program - 2.0

Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We’re starting a new round of mentoring groups, centered on specific lessons

Mentorship is an important part of the Carpentry experience. As Instructors, we both teach and mentor our Learners. We also mentor each other as Instructors, learning something new from each other every time we teach and interact with one another. The Mentoring Subcommittee offers guidance to new and continuing Instructors through weekly discussion sessions, where Instructors from the global Carpentry community gather to share their experiences and learn from each other. This is a fantastic opportunity to interact with other Carpentry Instructors from around the world.

Carpentries Mentorship Program - 2.0

Wed, 11 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

New Trainers On Board

Fri, 01 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Software and Data Carpentry now have a brand-new batch of Trainers. The new Trainers completed their training this week and will start to train new Instructors soon. Adding this new cohort takes us up to 40 in Trainer numbers.

For those not familiar with our terminology, Trainers are the people who train other people to be Data and Software Carpentry Instructors. This is done through a two-day instructor training course that may be delivered in person or remotely. Trainers are vital to increasing our Instructor numbers, and thus to building our community worldwide.

Genomics Issue Bonanza Starts Soon!

Wed, 30 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Only a few more hours until the Genomics Issue Bonanza! Join the community in a hacky-day dedicated to creating issues and simple PRs for cleaning up the Genomics lessons. You don’t need to be an expert in the materials - we need people to help search for broken links and typos too!

Click here to see the event start in your local time.

Upcoming Publication of Genomics Materials

Thu, 17 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

There’s been a lot of exciting work on the Genomics workshop materials over the past several months. A massive reorganization of the materials is underway, splitting the workshop into two separate tracks - one including R and the other including a variant-calling workflow. A host of folks have volunteered to serve as Maintainers for the revamped lessons, and others have joined a Curriculum Advisory Committee to provide high-level guidance on the workshop as a whole.

Bug BBQ to Update Instructor Training Materials

Thu, 27 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

A new version of the Carpentry Instructor Training curriculum is scheduled to be published on 10 August.

To prepare for this release, we ran an Issue Bonanza on 13-14 July to identify bugs and issues such as typos and broken links. Now that these issues have been organised into a plan of work, we plan to resolve them with a Bug BBQ on 3-4 August. Help make sure the final product is polished and complete by getting involved.

Help Update the Instructor Training Materials

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carpentry Instructor Training curriculum helps prepare new instructors to teach Carpentry workshops. It also impacts instructors’ teaching practices when they teach in other contexts, helping to spread the Carpentry pedagogical model and evidence-based teaching practices around the world!

We last published this curriculum in February. Since then, we’ve taught over 150 new instructors at a dozen training events. We’ve also welcomed ten new Instructor Trainers to our community, with fifteen more to join in September. We’ve learned a lot over the past six months and want to incorporate what we’ve learned before our next publication (scheduled for August 10th). Please join the Trainer community in updating these lessons!

Help Update the Instructor Training Materials

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Genomics Interest

Wed, 14 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Last month, we announced an upcoming revamp for the Data Carpentry Genomics lessons and asked you to let us know how you would like to be involved. We’ve had a tremendous amount of interest from the community, with 78 people indicating their enthusiasm for being a part of this effort.

Twenty-nine people volunteered to serve as Maintainers for the Genomics lessons. You will all be receiving an email shortly with more information about this role. Welcome to the Maintainer team!

Instructor Access to Workshops

Tue, 06 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software and Data Carpentry share a mission to spread computational and data literacy to the broader research community at a wide range of institutional types across the world. We also share core community values of openness and inclusiveness.

Recently, we learned that some of our host sites have selective criteria that limit physical access to their sites on the basis of nationality. These policies have the effect of excluding some Carpentry instructors from teaching at these sites. We recognize that often these criteria are imposed by the broader security and bureaucratic apparatus at the organization that the host operates within and are beyond the control of our contacts at those sites. Nevertheless, these policies can cause conflict with our mission and core community values.

Instructor Access to Workshops

Tue, 06 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Projects for Cycle Phobos

Mon, 05 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We’ve been enjoying the added focus and sense of accomplishment we’ve gained from working in cycles. If there’s something you’re excited about for the next round, let us know! If you’d like to join (or organize) a team for one of the next few cycles, let us know! Please post an issue on our conversations repo or email ebecker@carpentries.org.

Our third cycle - Cycle Phobos (May 29th through July 21st)

Our third cycle started this week and goes through July 21st. We focused on planning this first week. Here’s what we’re hoping to accomplish in this cycle.

Apply to Become a Carpentry Instructor Trainer!

Wed, 31 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carpentry community is growing! This month we welcomed ten new Instructor Trainers to our community. Now we are looking for the next group of new Trainers.

Carpentry Instructor Trainers run instructor training workshops, lead online teaching demonstrations, and engage with the Trainer community about how best to train new instructors. Trainers are also actively involved in developing and maintaining the instructor training curriculum. We meet regularly to discuss our teaching experiences and stay up to date on policies, procedures, and changes to our curriculum.

Apply to Become a Carpentry Instructor Trainer!

Wed, 31 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentry community is growing! This month we welcomed ten new Instructor Trainers to our community. Now we are looking for the next group of new Trainers.

Cycle Deimos wrapup

Thu, 25 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We’re wrapping up Cycle Deimos! Here’s what we accomplished over the past six weeks and what we’re still working on. To help with any of these projects, please get in touch!

Assessing Our Impact on Learners

What did we do? Data and Software Carpentry launched a long-term assessment survey in March 2017. The goal of this survey is to hear from our learners about what has transpired in their work and career since completing a Carpentry workshop. More information about this survey and our assessment efforts in general is located on the Assessment pages of both the Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry websites. The results show that a majority of respondents gained confidence in working with data (65%) and in using the tools we teach (77%), and also improved their coding practices (70%) as a result of completing a Carpentry workshop. Most of our respondents (86%) were also motivated to continue learning after the workshop, demonstrating our continued impact on learners.

Bug BBQ squashes bugs!

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

In preparation for Data Carpentry’s first lesson release, we hosted a Bug BBQ last week to resolve outstanding issues and issues identified during the Issue Bonanza.

The Bug BBQ and Issue Bonanza were a great success with 40 contributors in 8 countries holding lively discussions in the gitter chat room and submitting over 75 pull requests!

Throughout the event, the lesson maintainers commented on issues and pull requests, merged PRs and resolved merge conflicts. Francois Michonneau created a milestone in the R lesson with relevant issues for the BugBBQ, which will be a great model for future events. A huge thank you to all of our lesson maintainers who constantly demonstrate their commitment to keeping Carpentry lessons amazing!

Be a part of Data Carpentry’s first lesson release!

Wed, 05 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Bug BBQ starting tomorrow, Thursday, April 6, 2017 at 22:00 UTC

Be a part of Data Carpentry’s first lesson release! Data Carpentry is aiming to release its Ecology lessons on April 21st. We held an Issue Bonanza last month to identify everything from typos to updates in code blocks. This was a great success, with over 130 issues generated by 17 members of our community! Our next step is to go through and resolve those issues and finalize the Ecology lessons for release.

Projects for Cycle Deimos

Wed, 29 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Our second cycle - Cycle Deimos (March 27th - May 19th)

Our second cycle starts this week and goes through the middle of May. Here’s what we’re hoping to accomplish in this cycle.

Our first work cycle - Prometheus

Sun, 26 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We’re wrapping up our first work cycle! Here’s what we accomplished over the past six weeks and what we’re still working on. To help with any of these projects, please get in touch!

Planning for Data Carpentry Ecology Lessons Release

What did we do? This cycle we started the process for Data Carpentry’s first lesson release - for our Ecology lessons. During the Issue Bonanza 3/16-3/17, fifteen energetic members of our community and staff submitted a total of 134 issues forcus on items related to our lesson release checklist. Data Carpentry staff and maintainers will be going through these issues in preparation for our Bug BBQ (4/6-4/7). Stay posted for announcements about the Bug BBQ!

Our first work cycle, Prometheus

Thu, 23 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We’re wrapping up our first work cycle! Here’s what we accomplished over the past six weeks and what we’re still working on. To help with any of these projects, please get in touch!

Planning for Data Carpentry Ecology Lessons Release

What did we do? This cycle we started the process for Data Carpentry’s first lesson release - for our Ecology lessons. During the Issue Bonanza 3/16-3/17, fifteen energetic members of our community and staff submitted a total of 134 issues focused on items related to our lesson release checklist. Data Carpentry staff and maintainers will be going through these issues in preparation for our Bug BBQ (4/6-4/7). Stay posted for announcements about the Bug BBQ!

Ecology Issue Bonanza!!!

Mon, 27 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We’re excited to announce our first lesson release! Data Carpentry is preparing to publish our Ecology workshop materials on Zenodo this Spring. Software Carpentry regularly publishes their lessons to provide stable identifiers for polished versions of the lessons. This enables referenced discussions of the lesson materials and gives contributors a verifiable product to cite on their CVs or resumes.

This lesson release will include the following repos:

How we're getting things done

Thu, 16 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Adopting work cycles

The Data and Software Carpentry staff have been working together to make progress on projects that are important for our community. To help us do this, we’re trying out a new work process based on BaseCamp’s six week work cycle. You can read their blog post if you’re interested in the details of how structuring a work cycle works. We’re picking a small handful of projects to focus on for each six week cycle, with each staff member working on one or two projects. For each project, we’re setting realistic goals we know we can accomplish before the end of the cycle and holding ourselves accountable to meeting those goals. We’re spending the first two weeks of the cycle planning those goals, dividing up the work into teams, and setting timelines to make sure we stay on track. We envision this workflow having some specific advantages, including:

How we’re getting things done

Thu, 16 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Adopting work cycles

Moving Forward

Tue, 31 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As of January 30th, Greg Wilson has stepped down from his role as Director of Instructor Training to start a new position as Shopify’s Computer Sciences Education Lead.

Instructor training will continue under the guidance of Erin Becker, Data Carpentry’s Associate Director and Maneesha Sane, Data and Software Carpentry’s Program Coordinator. Erin has a strong background for this role from her postdoc at University of California, Davis studying the effectiveness of training methods for transforming instructional practices. She has been involved with the Carpentry community as an instructor trainer, a member of the Mentorship Subcommittee, and leader of the effort to form an instructor mentoring program.

Moving Forward

Tue, 31 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website
As of January 30th, Greg Wilson has stepped down from his role as Director of Instructor Training to start a new position as Shopify’s Computer Sciences Education Lead.

Career Pathways Panel Discussions

Wed, 28 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carpentries are excited to announce an upcoming series of panel discussions designed to help our community members become informed about the variety of career paths available to computationally literate members of their fields. Panel discussions will be held virtually in the months of January, February and March (tentative dates, below) with each session featuring 3-4 senior community members in Carpentry-related professions, including: tenured faculty, communicators/consultants, research software engineers, industry scientists, etc.

Career Pathways Panel Discussions

Wed, 21 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Join our new Mentorship Program!

Fri, 16 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentry community is growing quickly! Over a hundred new instructors have been trained in the past two months. These new instructors join our community because they’re excited to help fellow researchers who are struggling to analyze their data and because they share our commitment to reproducibility and open access. In spite of these shared values, however, a third of our instructors never go on to teach with us.

Feedback on Communications

Mon, 12 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software and Data Carpentry have at their core a collaboration-driven ethos, and communication is key to that collaboration. We’re reaffirming our commitment to open and transparent communication, because we know we can do better! We want to give community members opportunities to talk to each other, staff and Steering Committees, to get updates on efforts and activities and to generate ideas and participate in discussions.

Feedback on Communications

Mon, 12 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Making use of Data Skills

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Data Carpentry learners and instructors come from a variety of backgrounds and research disciplines. Many of us, myself included, don’t think of ourselves as “computer people.” We’re here because, at some point in our career, we found ourselves doing repetitive and error-prone computational tasks by hand when someone looked over our shoulder and said “Why on earth are you doing it like that!?” This person may then have leaned over our keyboard, typed for a few minutes, and finished the work that would have taken us the rest of the day. At least in my case, this happened routinely, every time a certain person happened to walk past my work station, until it eventually became more work to try to justify my process (“But I only have to do this once”. I’d say) than to capitulate and try to learn the computer magic.

Forming a Community-Developed Code of Conduct: What we learned.

Mon, 21 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Codes of Conduct are important because they define behavior expectations for a community and encourage positive relationships, and because of their importance, care must be taken when they are being developed. Defining the standards to which people will be held when they act as part of a community is inherently difficult. Everyone has slightly (or sometimes radically) different ideas about what counts as acceptable behavior, and most people are surprised that their idea of “acceptable” isn’t shared by all. On the other hand, some people reject the notion that any (legal) behavior should preclude them from being part of a community. In a group like the Carpentry community, with a fluid membership and a culture of co-operative, consensus based decision-making, the development of these standards must be a community process that can handle this complexity. How does this collective ‘you’ decide on behavioral rules for the community that reflect the diverse voices present? And how does this ‘you’ balance the need to provide clear boundaries without writing a comprehensive rule book?

Open Instructor Training

Sat, 19 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

(Originally posted on the Data Carpentry blog.)

After workshops and conferences, we frequently get questions from people who are interested in teaching with the Carpentries. We’re overjoyed by this interest and excited to bring more committed and enthusiastic instructors into our community. Unfortunately, until recently, we haven’t had the resources to open up our instructor training program, and have been holding training events primarily with Partnering institutions.

Open Instructor Training

Wed, 16 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

In response to this sustained community interest, Data and Software Carpentry re-opened applications in July for anyone interested in instructor training, regardless of affiliation. This two-day intensive training covers aspects of pedagogy critical for teaching our target audience, including creating useful formative assessments, motivating learners, dealing with cognitive load, and understanding how subject-matter expertise is developed. We also teach signature Carpentry instructional practices, including live coding and the use of sticky notes to track learner progress.

Responding to your Learners

Fri, 09 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Picture for a moment one of your undergraduate university courses, or a recent meeting of your department’s research seminar. If your experience is typical, more likely than not the instructor or presenter came in with a prepared set of materials on a slide deck (or for the old-school, on projector overheads), talked at you for an hour, maybe asked if there were any questions, and then packed up and left. If this sounds familiar, you’ve probably had lots of experience with the standard lecture.

September Data Carpentry All-Stars!

Thu, 01 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

As a community-led organisation, Data Carpentry depends on our active and highly-engaged volunteer community to carry out many of our core activities. Volunteer efforts span a wide range of activities, including teaching workshops, developing and maintaining lessons, and training and mentoring new instructors, among many other efforts. Without the commitment of our volunteers, Data Carpentry would never be able to reach such a broad learner base and to make such a huge impact on our learners.

Code of Conduct and Call for Volunteers for Policy Subcommittee

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carpentries are proud to share a common Code of Conduct (CoC), which outlines acceptable standards of behavior for our community members and those interacting with the Carpentries at in-person events and online spaces. Historically, however, we have not had an official process for reporting potential Code of Conduct violations or for adjudication and resolution of reported incidents. Thanks to input from our community, we recognize that defining these procedures is an important step in ensuring that any such issues are dealt with transparently in order to keep our community welcoming and safe for all.

Code of Conduct and Call for Volunteers for Policy Subcommittee

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentries are proud to share a common Code of Conduct (CoC), which outlines acceptable standards of behavior for our community members and those interacting with the Carpentries at in-person events and online spaces. Historically, however, we have not had an official process for reporting potential Code of Conduct violations or for adjudication and resolution of reported incidents. Thanks to input from our community, we recognise that defining these procedures is an important step in ensuring that any such issues are dealt with transparently in order to keep our community welcoming and safe for all.

Resources for Running Workshops

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A successful workshop is the result of coordinated effort among many different types of participants, including instructors, helpers, hosts, learners and staff. Software and Data Carpentry offer two types of workshops: Self-Organised and Centrally-Organised. These workshop types differ in terms of instructor training requirements, fee structures, and participant responsibilities, with local hosts and instructors at Self-Organised workshops taking on administrative responsibilities normally handled by Carpentry staff.

Resources for Running Workshops

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

A successful Data Carpentry workshop is the result of coordinated effort among many different types of participants, including instructors, helpers, hosts, learners and Data Carpentry staff. Data Carpentry offers two types of workshops - Self-Organised and Centrally-Organised. These workshop types differ in terms of instructor training requirements, fee structures, and participant responsibilities - with local hosts and instructors at Self-Organised workshops taking on administrative responsibilities normally handled by Data Carpentry staff.

Announcing our new Deputy Director of Assessment

Tue, 02 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are very happy to announce that Dr. Kari L. Jordan will be joining us as the new Deputy Director of Assessment! Kari is coming from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL where her postdoctoral research was focused on understanding the factors that influence faculty adoption of evidence-based instructional practices. She is also adjunct faculty at Embry-Riddle and teaches a Graphical Communications course. Prior to her postdoc, Kari completed a PhD in STEM Education at Ohio State. Her thesis focused on strategies for improving self-efficacy and sense of belonging in first-year engineering students. She holds a BS and MS in mechanical engineering from Michigan Tech. Kari’s experiences in educational research are closely aligned with Data Carpentry’s efforts to create a welcoming and inclusive workshop environment that enhances learners’ confidence and helps them build identities as data-driven researchers. As the Deputy Director of Assessment, Kari will be focusing on assessment of workshop learning outcomes, including both skill-based and identity-based outcomes.

Survey on workshops for for-profit organizations

Mon, 25 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Data Carpentry’s vision is “building communities teaching universal data literacy”. All our activities are focused on working towards this vision.

One of our signature activities is running and teaching workshops. Except for two, we have so far run such workshops only for non-profit organizations - universities, non-government non-profits and government organizations. We have also been assessing the idea of running workshops for for-profit organizations. One goal would be to raise additional revenue to subsidize workshop fees at non-profit institutions and to support long-term sustainability for Data Carpentry. Another is to provide Data Carpentry training and perspectives to people conducting research in industry. We’re still evaluating this idea, and before making any long-term policy we wanted to run pilot workshops and survey the instructor community on their thoughts about workshops for for-profit organizations.

Instructor and trainee involvement

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

This analysis is meant to answer questions about the extent of the non-teaching instructor and the non-certified trainee issues.

Analysis and Data Files

The RMarkdown that generated this document: Completion_rates.Rmd
The data: In the Data Carpentry metrics repo the files instructor_data_5_17_16_no_ids.csv and trainee_data_5_18_16_no_ids.csv

Questions

Questions to be answered include:

What percent of fully certified instructors haven’t taught?
- Overall
- Only those > 1 year past training
What percent of one-time instructors have only taught at their home institution?

Welcoming our new Associate Director

Tue, 10 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are excited to announce that Dr. Erin Becker has accepted the position of Associate Director for Data Carpentry! Erin did her PhD in computational genomics and her postdoc at the Center for Educational Effectiveness at UC Davis. Her postdoc focused on bringing evidence-based teaching strategies to teaching assistants, and she developed and implemented training programs, supervised and mentored instructors and assessed the effectiveness of training practices. Her computational background and experience with educational pedagogy and communities of instructors are skills and perspective she will bring to the Data Carpentry community, and we’re delighted to have her join the team!