Marco Chiapello on The Carpentries

Mentoring Groups Virtual Showcase: Oct 15 at 19:00 UTC

Tue, 10 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever been curious about what happens in a Carpentries Mentoring Group?

The Instructor Development Committee will be hosting its first Mentoring Virtual Showcase for the 2019-2020! The showcase will take place on October 15, 2019 at 19:00 UTC. During the showcase, current mentors and mentees will share progress on their projects, how they’ve grown, and how you can get involved. Come and see presentations from the mentoring groups who met over the summer to get an idea of what possibilities there are, whether you’re a future mentor, mentee, or enthusiast!

IDC meetings 8/19/2019: Findings from community discussion surveys

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

IDC Project: Findings from the Community discussion surveys

The Instructor Development Committee has been working hard on their first project for the year: looking at the data from the community discussion host and participants surveys. We will be discussing our findings at the IDC meetings on 08-19-2019. In advance of the meeting, we’d like to give you the highlights of our findings:

Main Findings:

Hosts and co-hosts/notetakers

In 2019, 21 Carpentries community members have hosted discussion sessions.
A little over half of these (12) are volunteer. The others are Carpentries staff.
On average, we have 12 discussions per month, and 7 unique hosts per month. That means each host has to take 1-2 sessions per month.
Only about half of the discussion sessions have notetakers
Over three quarters of attendees are attending the sessions for pre-post debriefs or instructor checkout

Attendees

The vast majority of sessions have more than 10 attendees
The number of community members attending for instructor checkout is greater than all other purposes by a factor 50.
Most attend Pre- and Post-Workshop Discussions, but the satisfaction is greatest for the Themed Discussions.
The discussion host ratings are consistently high
Most attendees would recommend these sessions to others

Conclusions

Overall, the data indicates that our discussion sessions are well attended, which is a good thing! However, only half of the sessions have notetakers, which can make hosting a session with 10+ people difficult. The satisfaction and host ratings are also positive. But, many sessions only have attendees who are doing checkout. While it leaves more time for questions about the checkout process, the attendees do not benefit from hearing from an experienced instructor about a real workshop. Thus, we have questions for the community:

Call for 2019 Mentoring Group Participation

Fri, 24 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Instructor Development Committee is excited to announce Round 1 of the 2019-2020 Mentoring groups.

Do you have a Carpentries goal that you’re not sure how to accomplish? Or do you want to help your fellow instructors gain the skills and confidence they need to achieve their goals? If so, we encourage you to join a Mentoring group! Each small group will be formed around common interests and goals. You’ll spend 8-12 weeks working with your colleagues to refine your goals and make progress toward them in a format that works for your group.