Toby Hodges on The Carpentries

GenAI in Workshops: A Bonus Module to Instructor Training

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is excited to launch a new bonus module to Instructor Training, GenAI in Workshops, designed to empower Instructors to account for learners’ use of generative AI chatbot tools in their workshops.

Why now?

We developed the bonus module in response to the growing numbers of reports we have received from Instructors who have observed frequent chatbot use among their learners. (This is a trend across many educational settings, which is probably one reason why the new series of community sessions on GenAI and Teaching is proving so popular.)

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.

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!

HPC Carpentry Approved as The Carpentries' Fourth Lesson Program

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 5 February 2026, our Board of Directors voted unanimously to approve the adoption of HPC Carpentry as the fourth official lesson program of The Carpentries, alongside the Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry lesson programs. In this post, our Director of Curriculum and members of the HPC Carpentry Steering Committee reflect on an exciting moment and explore what is involved in operationalising a new lesson program.

End of Support for Our Previous Lesson Infrastructure

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Following the January 2025 announcement that The Carpentries would sunset support for our previous lesson infrastructure, styles, at the end of last year, the Curriculum Team has been archiving repositories that had not migrated to The Carpentries Workbench over the last few weeks.

All of our official lessons had been expertly transitioned by Zhian Kamvar, our former Lesson Infrastructure Developer and architect of the Workbench, during the initial rollout of the new tooling in 2023. By the beginning of 2025, the majority of the community’s lessons in The Carpentries Incubator and Carpentries Lab had either been created with the Workbench or already been converted to use it. This included many that were migrated to the Workbench during a hackathon session at CarpentryConnect Heidelberg 2024, led by Aleksandra Nenadic and Matthew Bluteau.

Join the Data Carpentry Governance Committee

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Join the Data Carpentry Governance Committee and help guide the strategic development of the project!

Following the successful recruitment of new members to Governance Committees for Library Carpentry and Software Carpentry, we are calling for volunteers from the Data Carpentry community to become Lesson Program Governors for the project.

What is a Lesson Program Governor?

LPGCs oversee the strategy of the lesson program, advocate for the project in their networks, and act as a point of contact for the project e.g., liaising with the Board of Directors, the Core Team, and the wider community. Learn more about the powers and responsibilities of the committees in a previous blog post and check out the Lesson Program Governors Handbook for other resources that support this community role.

Welcoming new Lesson Developer Trainers

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is delighted to welcome five newly-certified Lesson Developer Trainers!

Thomas Cason
Sally Chang
Johan Hidding
Nathaniel Porter
Jannetta Steyn

This new cohort of Trainers enriches the existing group teaching Collaborative Lesson Development Training (CLDT), bringing a wealth and diversity of experience to share with our lesson developers. These five community members completed a seven-week program of Trainer Training to gain certification, combining relevant reading tasks and reflective discussions with support from members of the Curriculum Team and Maintainers of the CLDT curriculum.

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.

Ten Years of Library Carpentry

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

November 2025 marks the tenth anniversary of the very first Library Carpentry workshop at the Centre for Information Science, City University London. Past and present contributors to the lesson program got together last week to celebrate the milestone, share their memories, and express their gratitude for the many successes of the project over the last decade.

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.

Calling for Beta Pilot Workshops: Building Better Research Software

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We recently published a new version of Building Better Research Software, a lesson in The Carpentries Incubator designed to serve as a “next steps” workshop after Software Carpentry. Previously known as FAIR Research Software, the curriculum has undergone significant changes over the last few months, and we are now seeking Carpentries Instructors willing to teach it in their communities and provide feedback to further improve it.

Lesson Profile

Title: Building Better Research Software
Lesson site: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/better-research-software/
Lesson repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/better-research-software/
Teaching time: The lesson is designed to be taught in two full days or four half days

Learning Objectives

After following the lesson, learners will be able to:

AI Carpentry? Helping learners make better choices with genAI.

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In two recent community discussion sessions, we explored what mental model of machine learning/deep learning we could teach to learners already familiar with the basics of programming, to help them safely and sensibly implement these methods in their software and data analysis. Some great lessons on these topics already exist in The Carpentries Incubator and Lab, and I am excited about the prospect of adapting them into new official Carpentries workshops, either within an existing lesson program or under a completely new banner (e.g., “AI Carpentry.”)

Calling for new Lesson Program Governors

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Lesson Program Governance Committees (LPGCs) of Library Carpentry and Software Carpentry are looking for new members. This is an exciting time for both projects as they consider expanding their range of workshops. Joining the community governance body is a great way to guide the development and support the progress of a lesson program.

What is a Lesson Program Governor?

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.

AI Community Discussion Session Report: Case Studies to Inform Curriculum

Thu, 29 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In March, The Carpentries hosted a pair of AI and The Carpentries sessions, the last we currently have planned in this series. These sessions, titled Case Studies to Inform Carpentries Curriculum, were an opportunity to hear directly from community leaders and learn from their teaching experience with and about large language models (LLMs). After several open discussion sessions facilitated by members of the Core Team, we took a deeper dive into the perspectives and expertise of particular community members.

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.

Community Session Report: Essential Knowledge and Common Misconceptions

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In February, The Carpentries hosted the second of three pairs of AI and The Carpentries community discussion sessions. The topic of this pair of sessions was Essential Knowledge and Common Misconceptions. For the Curriculum Team, the primary objective of these discussions was to identify the aspects of LLMs and their use in programming/data science that are most important to discuss during a Carpentries workshop. This post summarises the main points raised and the perspectives shared by community members who joined the sessions.

Updating our Lesson Setup Instructions

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Lesson Setup Instructions Task Force was established in August 2024 to review existing setup instructions for Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry lessons and decide where and how these instructions should be updated. Members of the task force considered a wide range of options for installing Bash, Git, Python, and R, and engaged in many constructive discussions. The task was challenging, and the “best” option was often difficult to identify.

The Carpentries Lab: Introduction to Deep Learning with Python

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We are delighted to announce the addition of a new community-developed lesson on deep learning to The Carpentries Lab. The curriculum was peer reviewed in the Lab Reviews repository and approved for inclusion in The Carpentries Lab on 6th February 2025.

The Carpentries Lab was set up as a space for peer-reviewed lessons developed by the community. Designed to complement The Carpentries Incubator, where the community collaborates on the development of new lessons on a wide range of topics, the Lab is intended to serve as a platform for open peer-review of these community-developed lessons and the hosting of lessons that have passed through that review process.

Upcoming Changes to Self-Organised Workshops: Ensuring Sustainability and Continued Community Impact

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We are writing to inform the community about changes to Self-Organised workshops (SOWs). Due to rising costs, The Carpentries is introducing a fee for Amazon Web Services (AWS) instances used in Data Carpentry Genomics workshops. Furthermore, we have updated the definition and submission guidelines for SOWs. These workshops are vital in advancing The Carpentries’ mission and vision, significantly contributing to the organisation’s overall impact. We sincerely appreciate your efforts in organising and supporting them, as we recognise that they provide an accessible opportunity to teach Carpentries material.

Community Session Report: The Ethics of Teaching LLMs in Carpentries Workshops

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In January, The Carpentries hosted the first of three pairs of AI and The Carpentries community discussion sessions. The topic of this first pair of sessions was The Ethics of Teaching Large Language Models (LLMs) in Carpentries Workshops. They featured an exploration of various ethical implications of the development and use of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and GitHub Copilot, and a conversation about the scope for engaging with those implications while teaching Carpentries workshops. This post summarises the main points raised and the perspectives shared by community members who joined the sessions.

Debugging Lesson Website Builds

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries Workbench is a collection of tools that help community members build accessible websites from a collection of Markdown or R Markdown files. Lesson Developers and Maintainers can use the Workbench to build a version of the lesson site on their own local system, and a set of workflow descriptions allows the site to be built on GitHub’s cloud servers and served to the internet through GitHub Pages.

This is what a successful lesson build workflow looks like on GitHub. If your lesson builds do not look this, the rest of the blog post is for you!

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.

Ending Support for _styles_ in the Incubator

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Our lesson infrastructure, The Carpentries Workbench, was rolled out across all Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry lessons in May 2023. The Workbench replaced our previous lesson infrastructure, a Jekyll-based template (augmented by scripts and other resources developed by the community) affectionately known as styles. The product of several years of work by Zhian Kamvar, the Workbench made a number of improvements over styles, e.g. by bringing lesson sites up to at least WCAG AA standards in web accessibility, and making local installation of the infrastructure significantly easier on most community members’ systems.

Citation Information for Open Source Lessons

Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this post, co-authored by members of the CodeRefinery project and The Carpentries Curriculum Team, we discuss the current state and potential future applications of the Citation File Format (CFF) for open source lesson projects. The post concludes with a set of recommendations for what information should be captured in a CITATION.cff and how.

What is the Citation File Format (CFF)?

The Citation File Format is a plain-text human- and machine readable citation information metadata for software and datasets. The text files contain standardized fields and use the YAML serialization language. These fields are listed in a CITATION.cff text file, including but not limited to authors, title, version, identifiers, and type. Type is currently restricted to software and dataset. While lessons are neither software nor a dataset, the metadata collected in the CFF file represents well everything needed in order to also cite lesson materials.

HPC Carpentry Enters Lesson Program Incubation

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are thrilled to announce that HPC Carpentry has entered Lesson Program Incubation. This is another big step towards the project joining Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry and Software Carpentry as our The Carpentries Lesson Program.

Toby Hodges, The Carpentries Director of Curriculum, said:

I am delighted to see HPC Carpentry move a big step closer to joining The Carpentries. I attended my first HPC Carpentry workshop in Dublin in 2018 – the day before the first ever CarpentryCon! – and have been enthusiastically following them ever since. I know from previous roles how challenging it can be for researchers to get to grips with high-performance computing environments, and the positive impact good-quality training in these skills can have on the scale and reproducibility of their work. So I find the prospect of adding HPC Carpentry workshops to the list of training offered by The Carpentries really exciting. The project is also supported by an inspiring community that shares the values of our own: adopting the project as an official Lesson Program and merging our two communities will strengthen both groups.

New R Ecology Lesson Released

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Those visiting the Data Carpentry Data Analysis and Visualisation in R for Ecologists lesson today might notice things have changed! The redesigned version of the lesson, approved for adoption by the Curriculum Advisory Committee earlier this year, has now replaced the previous content.

The former version was released to Zenodo before the redesigned content was merged into the lesson, and the files and folders of that version can be downloaded from there or accessed through the history of the lesson repository.

Welcome to our Newest Lesson Maintainers!

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 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. 26 new Maintainers participated in the two hour onboarding, 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
Learning how and when to elevate issues to the Curriculum Advisory Committee

New and existing Maintainers were also invited to join a two hour GitHub Skill-up, aiming to teach them how to:

Introducing the New Editors of The Carpentries Lab

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I am delighted to welcome three new Editors to The Carpentries Lab, our platform for open peer review of community lessons. In February of this year, I made a call for volunteers to take responsibility for managing reviews in the Lab. The response from the community was phenomenal, and today I am thrilled to be joined by Federica Gazzelloni, Dimitrios Theodorakis, and Sébastien Vigneau. With support from the Curriculum Team, Federica, Dimitrios, and Sébastien will manage reviews as publicly-visible issue threads on the Lab Reviews repository. As Editors, they will process review requests, undertaking initial editorial checks before contacting and assigning community members to review lessons.

Curriculum Advisors Approve Redesigned DC R Ecology Lesson

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are delighted to announce that a redesigned version of the Data Analysis and Visualization in R for Ecologists lesson has been approved for adoption into the Data Carpentry Ecology curriculum. The redesigned version will replace the existing lesson later this year. The Curriculum Advisory Committee previously published a call for Instructors to test the lesson and provide feedback, which includes a summary of the differences between the two lessons.

The new lesson lets learners dive into data visualisation much more quickly, letting you quickly appreciate the benefits of the lesson and enticing you to learn more about data storage, manipulation and analysis as the lesson progresses. The new structure of the lesson helps make it more approachable for beginners and more motivating for all learners, and has received great feedback from Instructors who have taught the lesson so far.

Advancing AI Education in GLAM: Highlights from the Library Carpentry Code Sprint

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The lesson maintainers for Intro to AI for GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) and the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (the LC-CAC) co-hosted a seven-hour online code sprint on Jan 31, 2024 to help contribute bug fixes, edits, and improvements to this popular new lesson.

With the aim of moving the beta lesson closer to a stable release and adding it to the core Library Carpentry curriculum, a diverse group of global participants gathered to work on the lesson. Fourteen participants with a range of affiliations and expertise collaborated together during shifts that were hosted throughout the Sprint by Phil Reed, Cody Hennesy, Tim Dennis, and Leigh Phan. Participants included representatives from Hugging Face (UK), the University of Manchester (UK), the Medical Research Council at the Gambia Unit at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Smithsonian Institution, the State Archives of Baden-Württemberg (DE), The National Archives (UK), the University of California, Los Angeles (US), the University of Minnesota (US), and the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

The Carpentries Lab: Good Enough Practices in Scientific Computing

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are delighted to (belatedly) announce the addition of a new community-developed lesson, Good Enough Practices in Scientific Computing to The Carpentries Lab. The curriculum was peer reviewed in the Lab Reviews repository, and approved for inclusion in The Carpentries Lab on 17th July 2023.

The Carpentries Lab was set up as a space for peer-reviewed lessons developed by the community. Designed to complement The Carpentries Incubator, where the community collaborates on the development of new lessons on a wide range of topics, the Lab is intended to serve as a platform for open peer review of these community-developed lessons and the hosting of lessons that have passed through that review process.

Supporting the Curriculum Development Community in 2024

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The recent departure of several colleagues from The Carpentries Core Team has impacted every facet of the organisation’s operations, with changes outlined in a recent post to this blog.

As Curriculum Team Lead, my main concern has been figuring out the best answer to the question, “How can a Curriculum Team reduced in size and capacity best meet the needs of an active community of lesson developers and maintainers?” The support the Curriculum team provides falls into three categories: community-developed lessons, official lessons, and lesson infrastructure. In this post, I describe how the Curriculum Team will support the community’s activities in these areas for the rest of this year and how and why you can get involved.

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.

With Gratitude to our Legacy Core Team Members

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In the ever-changing landscape of the non-profit sector, we often find ourselves faced with unexpected challenges, like the recently announced layoffs at The Carpentries. These moments are never easy to deal with, and striking the perfect balance between pausing to reflect on what has been lost and moving forward soon enough to maintain stability and build on what remains is a struggle that persists for months afterwards. All the colleagues who have transitioned from our organisation were very valuable members of the Core Team, and their contributions over the years to the long-term sustainability of our mission have left an indelible mark on our programs and operations.

The Curriculum and Trainers for Collaborative Lesson Development Training

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

Earlier this week we announced the launch of a new program of Collaborative Lesson Development Training. Today I would like to provide some more details about the content of the training, and the community members who will be teaching it.

Lesson Developer Trainers

Following a first round of Trainer Training we have a cohort of eight Trainers who will lead the events. These Lesson Developer Trainers are experts in curriculum development drawn from The Carpentries community. They have a wealth of experience in design, development, and maintenance of lessons gathered from activities both within and outside The Carpentries.

Collaborative Lesson Development Training

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is launching a new program of Collaborative Lesson Development Training.

Following a couple of pilot events for the curriculum, and a first round of Lesson Developer Trainer Training, today we open up the training program for registrations.

What does the training teach?

The Collaborative Lesson Development Training curriculum teaches skills and concepts in three broad categories:

Celebrating The Carpentries Workbench

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In May 2023, a significant milestone was reached as The Carpentries transitioned all 43 of its official lessons to a new lesson infrastructure, The Carpentries Workbench. This project, led by Zhian Kamvar our Lesson Infrastructure Developer, was a three-year coordinated effort requiring input and contributions from many members of our community. We asked six of them to provide their reflections on the project, its impact, and Zhian’s leadership.

Jennifer Stubbs, Assistant Professor, Bradley University

Community Roles: Community Session Host, Instructor, Maintainer

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.

Welcoming the New Lesson Program Governance Committees

Mon, 08 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I am delighted to announce the new Lesson Program Governance Committees for Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry. These committees will provide community leadership for each lesson program, with responsibility to oversee project strategy, advocate for the lesson program and its community, and to communicate with the Executive Council, the Core Team, and the Carpentries community as a whole.

These committees are essential to the long-term health of The Carpentries as a community-led organisation, and I am deeply grateful to the following community members for stepping into the role.

The 2023 Instructor Notes Drive Starts Next Week!

Sat, 06 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The 2023 Instructor Notes Drive will take place from 8th to 19th May. During these two weeks, we call on the community to help us expand, update, and improve the guidance provided to Instructors on Carpentries lessons. It is a great opportunity to make an impact on the effectiveness of Carpentries lessons, to learn more about how to contribute to lessons, and to practice and develop your skills working with Markdown, Git, and GitHub.

Get Ready for the Instructor Notes Drive

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

From 8-19th May, we will be coordinating an Instructor Notes Drive: a community-wide effort to update, expand, and improve guidance provided to Instructors in lessons.

What are Instructor Notes?

Instructor Notes are pieces of advice, guidance, warnings, resources, etc for those teaching a lesson, to help them prepare and teach their workshops more effectively. Until now, Instructor Notes have been kept in a dedicated page, located under the “Extras” dropdown menu of a lesson site.

The Dovetail #17: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Thu, 13 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is the seventeenth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench (our new lesson infrastructure). In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench. If you are unfamiliar with The Workbench, you can watch a video that describes the workbench and the beta phase in two minutes.

If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, or if you have questions, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum: https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions

The Carpentries Lab: Metagenomics Curriculum

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We are delighted to announce the addition of a new community-developed curriculum on Metagenomics to The Carpentries Lab. The curriculum was peer reviewed in the Lab Reviews repository and approved for inclusion in The Carpentries Lab on 24th February 2023.

The Carpentries Lab was set up as a space for peer-reviewed lessons developed by the community. Designed to complement The Carpentries Incubator, where the community collaborates on the development of new lessons on a wide range of topics, the Lab is intended to serve as a platform for open peer review of these community-developed lessons and the hosting of lessons that have passed through that review process.

Developing Support for Instructors in 2023

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this post, we outline some of the activities the Core Team has planned to make the lives of Instructors easier in 2023.

Developing Instructor onboarding materials

The Workshop Administration Team is working with the Instructor Training Team and the Community Development Team to develop a general Instructor Onboarding. These onboarding events are intended to help prepare Instructors to teach their first workshops. During Instructor Training there is a plethora of information being shared and after certification the Instructors may still have questions directly related to workshop logistics. Updates to the development and launch of the Instructor Onboarding will become available as progress is made.

Launching Data Carpentry: Image Processing with Python

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I am thrilled to announce the first official release of the new Data Carpentry curriculum, Image Processing with Python. In November 2022, the Curriculum Advisory Committee met and approved a motion to move the lesson out of beta testing and into stable status. Version 1.0.0 of the curriculum was published to Zenodo last week. This means the curriculum is now available for teaching in official Data Carpentry workshops.

Curriculum Content

The Image Processing with Python curriculum teaches the concepts and skills needed to write automated processing pipelines for image data. Using examples from morphometrics, the curriculum covers the steps of a typical image processing workflow: loading images, masking, blurring and thresholding data, and ends with a capstone challenge to provide a chance for additional practice. Like Foundations of Astronomical Data Science, released in April 2022, this curriculum consists on a single lesson, designed to be taught over two full days or four half-days.

Calling for Volunteers to join a Lesson Program Governance Committee

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This post was updated on 3rd February 2023, extending the deadline for applications to the end of Wednesday 15th February 2023 Anywhere on Earth.

The Carpentries has three lesson programs, Software Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Data Carpentry. In November, I published a post describing the governance structure of each lesson program, and outlining a plan to introduce more community governance in the form of Lesson Program Governance Committees (LPGCs). Today, 24 January we open the call for volunteers to form these new committees. The call for volunteers will remain open until the end of 5th February, and I encourage anyone interested in community leadership and guiding the development of one of the lesson programs to apply.

Planning for Lesson Program Governance Committees

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In January 2023, The Carpentries will call for community leaders to volunteer to join Lesson Program Governance Committees for Software Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Data Carpentry.

Where We Have Been

The Carpentries was formed in January 2018, after Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry merged to form a single organisation. Our third lesson program, Library Carpentry, joined in November that year, and the structure of the organisation has remained relatively stable ever since. Before the merger, Software Carpentry & Data Carpentry had Steering Committees, which combined into a single entity when the two organisations agreed to merge, and became the first Executive Council of The Carpentries, following an election of new members in late 2017.

Announcing our newest Curriculum Advisory Committees

Thu, 29 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I am delighted to announce the formation of new Curriculum Advisory Committees for Data Carpentry Ecology, Data Carpentry Image Processing with Python, and Data Carpentry Social Science. This follows the Curriculum Advisory Committees (CACs) that were formed for many of our curricula earlier this year, and means that we now have Curriculum Advisors providing guidance on all of The Carpentries lessons in English. In addition to these new CACs for Data Carpentry, the CAC for Software Carpentry welcomes two new members.

Apply to become a Curriculum Advisor

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This post was updated on 12 July 2022 to indicate that we are also recruiting for new members to join the Curriculum Advisory Committee for Software Carpentry.

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. In February 2022, we announced new CACs for Software Carpentry and three Data Carpentry curricula (Astronomy, Genomics, and Geospatial).

Image Processing with Python - Call for Beta Pilot Applications

Thu, 19 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Data Carpentry: Image Processing with Python curriculum is ready for beta testing. First developed for the Digital Imaging and Vision Applications in Science (DIVAS) project, the lesson has already been through several iterations and pilot workshops. The curriculum is now ready for testing by the Instructor community, with the goal of preparing a full release within the next 12 months.

We are seeking community members to host and teach beta pilot workshops with the Image Processing with Python curriculum in July - October 2022. Continue reading for more information on the curriculum, the previous alpha pilot workshops, and how to apply to host and/or teach a beta pilot.

Piloting Collaborative Lesson Development Training

Thu, 07 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

This June and July, we will pilot a new program of Collaborative Lesson Development Training. To apply to join the training, follow the link at the end of this post.

About the Training

Aimed at groups of collaborators who want to start creating a new lesson, Collaborative Lesson Development Training will focus on three main topics:

Good practice in lesson design and development
Creating lesson websites with The Carpentries Workbench
Collaboration skills

Spread over six half-days, with an extended break between sessions 4 & 5, participants will learn how to prepare an effective lesson to suit a defined target audience, how to implement that lesson as an open source website using The Carpentries Workbench, and how to collaborate and build community around a lesson project.

Piloting Open Peer Review of Lessons

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

For the past few years, The Carpentries curriculum community has been designing and developing lessons in The Carpentries Incubator. As illustrated by the first figure in Zhian Kamvar, Lesson Infrastructure Technology Developer’s post from last year, about alpha testing the infrastructure redesign, this lesson development is now happening at a huge scale. At the time of writing, the Incubator hosts more than 100 lessons at various stages of the development cycle. We have been supporting these efforts by providing training on lesson development, highlighting the ways community members can contribute to the development of lessons in a regular series of Incubator Lesson Spotlight posts on this blog, and maintaining channels for this subcommunity of lesson developers to communicate and collaborate.

Incubator Lesson Spotlight: Building Websites with Jekyll & GitHub Pages

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Incubator Lesson Spotlight highlights a lesson under development by our community in The Carpentries Incubator. In this edition, we look at the progress being made on the {{page.lesson_title}} lesson, and hear from the authors about how The Carpentries community can get involved with the ongoing development of this lesson.

Lesson Profile

Title: {{page.lesson_title}}
Lesson Pages: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/jekyll-pages-novice/
Lesson Repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/jekyll-pages-novice

Learning Objectives

After this lesson, learners should be able to:

create formatted page content with Markdown
configure their project to build and serve pages on GitHub
build a coherent site with multiple pages using the Jekyll framework
customise the layout and style of the pages on their site

Target Audience

This lesson guides learners through making websites using Jekyll in a web hosting service GitHub Pages. Anyone comfortable interacting with websites in a web browser and willing to learn how to produce website. Basic understanding of HTML and/or Markdown as webpage authoring languages is welcome but not a must.

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.

The Carpentries Community Facilitators Program: 6-months in

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In September 2020, The Carpentries introduced the Community Facilitators Program. This new initiative sought to create new pathways for active involvement in everyday community activities by more community members. This program was developed to sustain the growing Carpentries community and support other core programs that contribute to the advancement of our mission. In November 2020, we met The Carpentries Feedback Facilitators, who were onboarded as our first cohort of Community Facilitators, focussing on feedback facilitation.

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.

Reflecting on the first round of Lesson Development Study Groups

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In February-April 2021, we ran the inaugural round of Lesson Development Study Groups (LDSG). The program combined weekly group discussions with reading and practical “homework” tasks requiring participants to apply the skills and practices they were learning to their lesson as they developed it.

The Study Groups program was designed to help community members taking the first steps in designing a new lesson in The Carpentries Incubator. It focussed on good practices in lesson design, and elements of The Carpentries lesson infrastructure, with the aim of giving the participants a solid foundation from which to continue building their lessons. We also hoped that it would help us to identify gaps in the resources we provide around lesson development, as we work to improve the quality and accessibility of our infrastructure, processes, and documentation.

Pondering on the Question of Community Sustainability

Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries has been around for a long while - Greg Wilson’s telling of the first ever Carpentries-style workshop dates back to July 1998 with initial discussion and ideation sessions about what is now The Carpentries starting three years prior in 1995. In 2021,this amounts to over 20 years of iterative design on The Carpentries style of teaching and lesson content, immense community collaboration and input on dozens of initiatives, peer mentoring and collective ownership of different processes — all of which have contributed to the healthy and impactful status that this community-led organisation holds in the present day.

Call for Pilot Workshops: Neuroimaging Lessons

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

An important step in the process of developing a new lesson is the moment when material is taught for the first time by someone other than the original author(s). In our description of the lesson life cycle we refer to these events as beta pilot workshops. After teaching the new lesson material, Instructors provide feedback to the lesson developer(s) to enable the lesson to be further polished in final preparation for an official release.

Alpha testing a Jekyll Pages lesson

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In the past several months, we have been developing a lesson, Building Websites with Jekyll and GitHub Pages, in The Carpentries Incubator. In November 2020, we taught this material for the first time in two mini-workshops hosted by UW-Madison.

The first time a lesson is taught is always an important step in its development. It is a chance to really assess how well the lesson objectives and material fit the target audience.

It is also usually the first time exercises have been tested by learners, and can expose weaknesses in the material that are difficult to spot from our perspective as a lesson author. In the life cycle of a lesson, The Carpentries refer to these initial trial runs undertaken by lesson authors as alpha pilots.

Apply to Join The Carpentries Lesson Development Study Groups

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are thrilled to announce a new program of Lesson Development Study Groups for members of the Carpentries community who would like develop a new lesson in The Carpentries Incubator.

The Study Groups program will bring these community members together to develop their lessons as a cohort. Participants will benefit from the process by learning and discussing good practices in lesson design and share their experience as they build their lessons.

Thank you for contributing to Glosario!

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In October we asked you to contribute to Glosario, the online, multilingual glossary of data science terms, as part of Hacktoberfest. The Carpentries community is international and, as well as contributing definitions of new terms in the languages already represented in the glossary, we wanted to encourage the introduction of new and translated definitions into more languages.

We know that the Carpentries community is amazing and we are delighted to say that you came through for us again! At the end of September, Glosario contained 528 definitions for 467 terms in four languages. By the time all contributions made during Hacktoberfest had been merged, the glossary contained 716 definitions for 521 terms, in eight languages! In addition to all these new definitions, translations, and languages, Glosario had also gained four new editors - Janetta Steyn and Angelique Trusler for Afrikaans, Beatriz Milz for Portuguese, and Batool Almarzouq for Arabic - and twelve new contributors (13 contributors before Hacktoberfest; 25 after).

Call for Pilot Workshops: Introduction to Conda for (Data) Scientists

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Announcing the new Help Wanted page

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A new Help Wanted page was recently added to The Carpentries website, providing a list of issues in need of some help, from Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, Software Carpentry, The Carpentries, and Carpentries Incubator GitHub repositories. We hope this will serve as a single point of reference for trainee instructors completing the checkout process, and anyone else looking for a way to make an impact by contributing to our materials.

The page provides an accessible overview of all open issues that maintainers have identified as needing help, across many of our official and community-developed lesson repositories. The listing also includes issues from the repositories of other Carpentries resources, such as Glosario, and infrastructure such as the organisational websites and lesson template.

Hacktoberfest 2020 - Glosario Contribution Drive

Mon, 05 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In July The Carpentries announced Glosario, an open source, multilingual glossary of data science terms. Since that blogpost was published, almost 200 more terms have been added to the glossary in English, along with many more definitions in other languages. In the future, the resource will help lesson developers and maintainers make their materials more findable, allow learners to identify paths between lessons, and support non-English speaking learners in grasping lesson material.

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.

CarpentryConnect Events in 2020

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The first community conference designed for the global Carpentries community, CarpentryCon 2018, was held in Dublin, Ireland between May 30 and June 1 of that year.

Since then, community members have expressed great interest in coming together more frequently to exchange ideas and knowledge, collaborate and network, and have found the opportunity to do so in smaller events in their regions and cities. To create a distinction between the global Carpentries community conferences - CarpentryCon, and regional community convenings, The Carpentries dubbed the latter CarpentryConnects.

What's Involved in Leading a Carpentries Community Committee?

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

As you may have read in Kari’s blogpost, The Carpentries is looking for new leaders of the Instructor Development Committee (IDC). As a former Co-Chair of the IDC, I’m writing this post to encourage anyone interested to take advantage of this rewarding opportunity and also to give some advice, perspective, and further information on what the new leader(s) can expect. Kari did a great job of describing in that previous post the work of the IDC and the benefits and responsibilities of leading the Committee, so I will not retread that ground. Instead, I’ll focus on my personal experience.

Join Us at CarpentryConnect Manchester 2019!

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Did you see the recent announcement that registration and call for proposals are now open for the CarpentryConnect Manchester 2019 conference? This event is an opportunity for members of The Carpentries’ global community of instructors and anyone else with an interest in helping researchers to improve their computational skills, to get together for a few days to exchange ideas and learn some new things. With an exciting programme (still under development, no spoilers!), the sessions will focus on developing new and existing curricula, increasing the sustainability of research software, methods and tools for better teaching, and more. The conference will also have as much to offer those who are newcomers to The Carpentries as it does to those who have attended a workshop, helped or taught at one or two, or been involved for years.

Discussion Summary: Delivering Exercises to Learners

Fri, 09 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

On Wednesday 7th November, members of the community joined a themed instructor discussion session to share experience and ideas around how we deliver exercises to our learners during a lesson/workshop. Inspired by this excellent blogpost by Sarah Brown, the Instructor Development Committee wanted to leverage the experience of other instructors on this important topic. Sarah, who also lead the discussion in this session, also wanted to collect feedback and ideas to bring back to the Lesson Infrastructure Committee to inform their design choices when updating our lesson template.

Introducing the Instructor Development Committee

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

After some discussion, at recent meetings of the Mentoring Committee and on the associated GitHub repository, members of the Committee have chosen to rename the group. We will now be the Instructor Development Committee.

The discussion came about from an acknowledgement that “Mentoring” implied that the Committee focussed solely on mentoring activities such as the Mentoring Groups Program (more on which below). While it’s true that part of what we do is to support the amazing work that Kari Jordan and others do with mentoring groups, that’s only one aspect of the conversations that we have at our monthly meetings and the activity of the Committee members outside of those meetings.

Report: Lesson Infrastructure Breakout at CarpentryCon

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

One of the breakout sessions at CarpentryCon focussed on lesson infrastructure: the template we use for our lessons and how this template and the platform that we use to deliver this material (GitHub Pages & Jekyll) could be improved/better utilised. The session was led by François Michonneau, our Curriculum Development Lead, with notes taken by Toby Hodges. This blogpost is a summary of the discussion in that session. You can see the original notes on this etherpad.

Get More Involved with The Carpentries' Instructor Community

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Hi folks,

Are you looking for a way to get more involved in The Carpentries instructor community? Would you like to meet more members of the community, help new instructors to prepare for organising and teaching a workshop, and benefit from the experience that other instructors have gained from teaching? We are looking for volunteers to host instructor discussion sessions.

These sessions are regular, one-hour online meetings that bring together trainee and experienced instructors to reflect on teaching experience and prepare for future workshops. The job of the host is to participate in and facilitate these discussions, and to make sure that all participants have an equal opportunity to participate in the conversation.

Thoughts on CarpentryCon: the Value of Community

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Belinda Weaver has already given a great overview of CarpentryCon, praising both the program and the atmosphere of the conference. One of the most important lessons that I learned during the conference was how great it is to keep quiet and hear someone else say what I think (yes, it took me 33 years to learn this), so I’ll try not to repeat much of what she already said so well. I would like to echo her praise of the organising committee though, and applaud their determination to provide assistance with travel costs. It was wonderful to see the global Carpentries community so well represented at our inaugural conference.

Running workshops on limited budgets

Fri, 13 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Anelda van der Walt and co-host Toby Hodges ran the first themed discussion session in March to brainstorm ideas about running workshops with little to no funding. Attendees from Australia, the US, the UK, and Canada joined to hear and contribute ideas.

Existing Funding Models

The Brisbane model is to use Eventbrite to charge a low fee (around AUD $60) for attendance at workshops. This has a few benefits - waitlists can be managed, the booking widget appears in the workshop website, fees can be easily refunded up to a week before the workshop, and attendance is generally good because people have paid out of their own pockets or have been sponsored by their school to come. The fee covers the costs of room hire and the fairly lavish morning and afternoon teas that keep people from wandering off in search of sustenance during breaks. The Brisbane instructor pool is fairly large so there is no need to fly people in, which means we don’t have to factor in those costs. One drawback is having to pay the catering and room hire costs up-front by personal credit card as the Eventbrite payout comes only after the workshop. This is a break-even charge - we could charge more and return some money to The Carpentries, but our main interest is in keeping costs low.