Tiffany Timbers on The Carpentries

2016 Bug BBQ Summary

Mon, 15 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At the beginning of the summer, the Software Carpentry community joined forces hold their first ever Bug BBQ. The goal of this event was to squash as many bugs in our core lessons as possible before we published and shipped the new version (2016.06) of the lessons. In addition to the goal of getting a large amount of work done as quickly as possible, we also aimed to use this event to engage and connect with our world-wide community.

Software Carpentry Bug BBQ

Wed, 04 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry is having a Bug BBQ on June 13th

Software Carpentry is aiming to ship a new version (5.4) of the Software Carpentry lessons by the end of June. To help get us over the finish line we are having a Bug BBQ on June 13th to squash as many bugs as we can before we publish the lessons. The June 13th Bug BBQ is also an opportunity for you to engage with our world-wide community. For more info about the event, read-on and visit our Bug BBQ website.

2016 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefings, Rounds 04 and 05

Thu, 10 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On February 23, Rayna Harris, Sheldon McKay, and Tiffany Timbers ran the 4th round of post-workshop instructor debriefing. On March 8th, Rayna Harris, Raniere Silva, and Belinda Weaver ran the 5th round of post-workshop instructor debriefing.

New lesson materials

Data Carpentry Genomics Lesson. Greg Wilson recently sent out an email about updating the lesson maintainer roles for Software Carpentry to jump-start finalizing the Ecology and Genomic lessons. These aren’t final yet, but the Iowa State University instructors spent about considerable time putting together a genomic lesson. You can view the Git repository with their lessons here.

2015 Software + Data Carpentry Instructor and Helper Retreat

Tue, 24 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software and Data Carpentry recently held their first ever Instructor + Helper Retreat. The aim of this event was to bring instructors and helpers together remotely and at local sites around the world for a day of sharing skills, trying out new lessons and ideas and discussing all things instructor and helper related. This Retreat attempted to meet these goals via 17 local meetups in North America, Europe and Australia, 14 sessions broadcast globally via Google Hangouts on Air, and many people participating remotely by watching and asking questions at the global broadcast sessions.

In addition to bringing the community together, the Retreat also has generated additional resources surrounding many topics of interest to Software and Data Carpentry instructors and helpers; the global broadcast sessions are archived on YouTube (pending session leaders leaving them up) and can be watched at any time. The links to these videos are archived on the Retreat website. Notable other moments from retreat as captured via twitter can be accessed here.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 21

Fri, 13 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The mentoring subcommittee held the 21st round of debriefing for instructors on October 27. We had some great discussions with a few instructors about recent workshops and their experiences with implementing a module on imposter syndrome and methods for integrating lessons throughout the workshop.

Virtual Instructors Retreat

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Mentoring sub-committee is planning a Virtual Instructors Retreat this fall. The goal of the event is to build community between instructors, as well as give us all a chance to practice our teaching and give and receive feedback from each other. This will be a day-long event where we meet in person with our local community, where possible, and remotely where meeting in person is not possible. World-wide, all groups will also interact with each other via internet conferencing for specific portions of the event.

We want as many of our instructors as possible to be able to participate, so please help us to do this by filling out this Doodle poll.

Also, we are interested in your ideas about such an event. Please feel free to mail any ideas, comments or questions to the Mentoring sub-committee.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 15

Fri, 07 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The most recent installation of instructor debriefings by the mentoring subcommittee was held on August 4 to discuss recently completed workshops. We were joined by new instructors as well as a number of very experienced instructors (some of whom also maintain lesson repos), who all taught recently or are preparing to teach workshops. We highlight below a few of the main points from our discussions, including interesting new ideas, things that worked well, and things that were difficult.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 13

Sat, 18 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week the mentorship team ran the 13th round of instructor debriefing session and received feedbacks from the workshops at Brigham Young University (check Belinda's post about it), Johns Hopkins University, Notre Dame University, Pennsylvania State University, the Jackson Laboratory, the University of Queensland, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and the University of Toronto - Women in Science and Engineering (check Pauline's post).

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 11

Fri, 19 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We held our 11th round of instructor debriefing last week where we discussed the Software Carpentry workshops held at the University of Oslo, University of Connecticut, University of Campinas, University of the Basque Country, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Berkeley Institute for Data Science, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, and Oklahoma State University, as well as a Data Carpentry workshop at the National Data Integrity Conference at Colorado State University. At this debriefing we also had 3 new instructors join us (who have yet to teach a workshop but will be teaching one in the near future) to gain an insight about what works (and what doesn't) at our workshops out in the wild.

Reflections Following a Women in Science Workshop

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The number of women pursuing careers in STEM fields has increased over the last few decades, yet, there are still major gender gaps in the areas of mathematics, computer science, engineering and physics (Hill, Corbettt and St Rose, 2010). In the US, women make up close to 50% of the work force yet the percentage of STEM jobs occupied by women is only 25% (Beede, Julian, Langdon, McKittrick, Khan, and Doms, 2011). Part of this gap may be linked to biases and stereotypes that suggest "boys are better than girls" at math. These stereotypes can affect a girl's performance on tests and her perceived skill at math, ultimately influencing her decision to pursue a career and education in fields that require a foundation in mathematics and computing (Shapiro and Williams, 2011; Gunderson, Ramirez, Levine, and Beilock, 2012).

How does this relate to Software Carpentry? Software Carpentry's mission is "to teach researchers basic lab skills for scientific computing." Given that female participants may experience an added anxiety related to gender biases when learning computing skills, Software Carpentry instructors should be aware of these stereotypes and how they might affect their learners. Further, workshops with at least one female instructor can counteract these stereotypes by showing that women are skillful in computing tasks.

But how much intervention is necessary and could extra support for women actually be a detriment? Following a Data and Software Carpentry workshop for Women in Science at the University of British Columbia, we have thought about the advantages and disadvantages of holding a workshop for women only. We have posed the following question:

"Is a women-only Software Carpentry workshop helpful or harmful for increasing the number of women in STEM?" A few points in each category are given below.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 6

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We held our sixth round of post-workshop debriefing last week. We discussed the Software Carpentry workshops held at the University of Arkansas, Utah State University, the University of Waterloo and the first Software Carpentry workshop ever held in Korea at the Korea Radio Promotion Association (and yes we now have lesson translated in Korean)! We were also joined by a Data Carpentry instructor who taught in a recent workshop at Espoo, Finland.

What Do People Want to Learn?

Sun, 15 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In the planning phase of organizing a Software Carpentry workshop for my home department of Molecular Biology & Biochemistry I started to wonder what participants want to learn. I designed a short survey to answer this question, and from my small department, ~20% (30 people) filled it in. Here's what they said: