Karin Lagesen on The Carpentries

Recruiting new members to the Code of Conduct Committee

Wed, 09 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries are committed to providing a welcoming and supportive environment for all people, and our [Code of Conduct]({{ site.code_of_conduct_url }}) (CoC) is the framework for this commitment. The Code of Conduct Committee (CoCC) is responsible for managing the Code of Conduct, handling reports of conduct violations, and advocating for the CoC in the community.

The Carpentries Code of Conduct Committee is currently recruiting new members. We seek 3-4 community members who are passionate about ensuring that The Carpentries is a welcoming space, who have time to dedicate to the committee, and who bring diversity to the committee. In addition, it is beneficial, but not necessary, to have previous experience with this kind of work.

Updates to The Carpentries' Code of Conduct

Tue, 11 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Since its inception as Software Carpentry, The Carpentries community has always subscribed to a Code of Conduct (CoC). Our Code of Conduct helps explain to community members and others what behaviours are acceptable and expected, and what constitutes unacceptable behaviour. Our CoC is a crucial part of making our community more inclusive and diverse, because it extends a welcome to everyone regardless of their background, ethnicity, skill level, gender, career stage, or beliefs.

2017 Election: Karin Lagesen

Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

2017 Election: Karin Lagesen

I have been a member of the Software Carpentry Steering Committee for two years, first as secretary and then as vice chair. My involvement with the SCF started in 2012, when I attended a workshop in Oslo, Norway. I signed on as an instructor in 2013 and became an instructor trainer this year. I have around 10 workshops, including instructor training, under my belt. As a member of the SC, I have mainly focused on Software Carpentry operations and on the development of instructor training and instructor trainers. In addition to serving on the Steering Committee, I am also a member of the mentoring committee. Although I have not been able to be as active in the mentoring committee this year, I have previously worked on developing programs focusing on integrating new instructors and on helping new instructors teach their first workshop.

Cambridge Instructor Training 19-20 September 2016

Thu, 20 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last month, Steve and Karin taught an instructor training workshop at the University of Cambridge, sponsored by the R Consortium. The event was organized by Laurent Gatto, a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, with help from Paul Judge and Gabriella Rustici from the University of Cambridge Bioinformatics Training facility. 25 trainees from a diverse set of backgrounds spent two days getting to know each other and learning how to teach, and several have already completed the checkout process. You can read a full write-up on the SSI website, and we hope to be able to organize a repeat in the new year.

2016 Election: Karin Lagesen

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

For the past year, I have served as the Software Carpentry Steering Committee’s secretary. My involvement with the SCF started in 2012, when I attended a workshop in Oslo, Norway. I signed on as an instructor in 2013, and have taught 9 workshops since then. In addition to serving on the Steering Committee, I am also a member of the mentoring committee, where I have focused on ways of giving our instructors hands-on experience with the teaching material, with the goal of making it easier for new instructors to get started. I am also currently training to become an instructor trainer.

I have a PhD in bioinformatics from the University of Oslo, and am currently employed at the Norwegian Veterinary Institute and the University of Oslo. My background is in both computer science and molecular biology. Since I have formal training in both fields, I am frequently the one to translate the biological problem into a computational one. I have often been called upon to teach people with little to no training in computer science how to do their bioinformatics analyses. This means introducing them to Unix, to command-line work and to basic programming. Working in such multi-disciplinary situations has made me very aware of how hard it can be to move into a field far removed from your core area of expertise. This makes the values and skills that Software Carpentry teaches particularly important to me.

Three Flavors of Instructor Training

Fri, 18 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's been a busy few months for instructor training: along with a two-day class at the University of Manchester, we also wrapped up a pilot of a new kind of multi-week course and a two-day version of the same material. We have also been training four new trainers, and have put the first complete draft of the training materials online. Here's some of what we think we've learned so far.

Feedback on Practicum Proposal

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We have wanted for some time to give newly-trained instructors more experience with workshop materials and our teaching methods before sending them into the field. The mentoring committee and other community members have now created a proposal for doing this, and would like to test it out early in 2016 with participants in the two training session that ran this fall. We have therefore created a short questionnaire to find out whether our plan is feasible and takes us in the right direction.

The Steering Committee has Landed!

Sun, 12 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Steering Committe has now had its first few meeetings. Minutes from them are up, please go have a look if you are wondering what we are up to!

2015 Election: Karin Lagesen

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I have been involved with Software Carpentry since I attended a workshop in Oslo, Norway, in 2012. I started out as a student, then went through the second round of instructor training, before being an instructor at my first workshop in 2013. Since then, I have organized one workshop and been an instructor at five others. I have also been involved with revamping the pre-assessment forms. This work has been very fulfilling and challenging on very many levels, and I now want to expand on my efforts by volunteering for the steering committee.

The Oslo Bootcamp

Wed, 10 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Karin Lagesen writes:

The bootcamp took place at the University Library at the main campus of the University of Oslo. We had set a limit at 40 people, and we had a total of 32 attendees signing up. Sign-up was in the beginning quite slow, and we were actually at one time wondering whether we would have to cancel the event. But, as we got into June sign-ups picked up. We had decided to ask people to pay $20 to sign up (which was subsequently converted into coffee) and this might have caused people to not sign up until they were sure they could join. We ended up with 27 actual attendees the first day and 25 on the second day. The attendees were for the most part related to biology in some way—not strange considering we had advertised it in connection with the Galaxy 2013 community conference and on several bioinformatics related email lists. Also, most of them were either doing their PhDs or working on a post-doc. Both Lex and I feared lots of issues with installation, but even though the pre-bootcamp survey showed that almost half of the attendees were bringing Windows laptops things went surprisingly smoothly.