Zhian N. Kamvar on The Carpentries

Release of Sandpaper 0.15.0

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is the eighteenth post continuing 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.

Updates on The Carpentries Lesson Infrastructure

Wed, 28 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this bitter-sweet blog post, I want to start by noting that we quietly passed a milestone last month. On 15 May, we successfully rolled-out our new lesson infrastructure, The Carpentries Workbench to all 43 of our official lessons. The Workbench, which has been featured regularly on our blog brings major improvements to how our community creates, maintains, teaches, and learns our lessons.

Building Success

The Workbench Prioritises accessible design principles and uses automated testing to validate lesson content for compliance with WCAG AA+ accessibility best practices, Is built on tools we teach in our workshops and that are commonly used in our community, reducing barriers for new lesson developers, maintainers, and contributors, More accurately reflects lesson authorship by clearly separating the tools needed to build the lesson from the content. Employs a modular design that is intended for future growth to support our community.

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

Workbench Beta Phase Complete

Tue, 04 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Beta Phase Complete

Since October 2022, we have been running a test of our new lesson infrastructure, known as 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

If you have used the workbench and would like to provide feedback, please tell us about your experience.

The Dovetail #16: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Tue, 14 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is the sixteenth 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.

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.

The Dovetail #15: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fifteenth 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.

The Dovetail #14: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Tue, 17 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fourteenth 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 twom minutes.

The Dovetail #13: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the thirteenth 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 have used the workbench and would like to provide feedback, please tell us about your experience.

The Dovetail #12: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 07 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the twelfth 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 have used the workbench and would like to provide feedback, please tell us about your experience.

The Dovetail #11: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the eleventh post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench. In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench.

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

If you have used the workbench and would like to provide feedback, please tell us about your experience.

The Dovetail #10: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the tenth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench. In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench.

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

If you have used the workbench and would like to provide feedback, please tell us about your experience.

The Dovetail #9: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 19 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the eighth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench. In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench.

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

Beta Phase Updates

The beta phase is up and running with the first lesson: “Data Analysis and Visualisation in R for Ecologists”. The live version is at https://datacarpentry.org/R-ecology-lesson, while The Workbench version is at https://preview.carpentries.org/R-ecology-lesson. Note that The Workbench version of the lesson is a snapshot from 2022-10-17, which allows the Maintainers of the lesson to practise working with the new infrastructure before it becomes the default. On 2022-11-14, the underlying lesson repository will be converted to using the Workbench. During this time, the default URL will serve a snapshot of the lesson, and the live lesson will be served at the preview URL. Note that any pull requests that come into the lesson during that time should not come from forks created before 2022-11-14.

The Dovetail #8: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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

Beta Phase To Resume

As we enter into the Q4, I am pleased to announce that the long-delayed beta phase will commence from 2022-10-17 until 2023-03-13 with one lesson entering the beta phase per week. Details of the beta phase and the official table of lessons can be found below and on the Workbench Beta Phase page, with explanation of what the different stages of the beta phase will bring.

The Dovetail #7: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 21 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the seventh post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench. In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench.

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

We are hard at work drawing up plans for The Beta Phase, which will tentatively restart on 2022-10-17. I have recruited members from the Curriculum, Workshop Administration, Assessment, and Communications teams to help out with the effort. By the time the beta phase is over and we convert our lessons (current estimate: Q2 2023), the whole community should be aware of and excited for the changes!

The Dovetail #6: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 24 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the sixth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench. In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench.

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

A lot has happened since the last time I provided an update (2022-07-20), just not that much on The Workbench side of things. I attended and presented at the RStudio conference 2022, took a short “staycation” to decompress (with a broken aircon, no less!), attended and presented at CarpentryCon 2022, and sat on hiring committees for our new Director of Technology. During this time, I was able to tackle some superficial aspects of the Workbench itself.

The Dovetail #5: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 20 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fifth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail.” In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news for The Carpentries Workbench.

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

Announcements

Workbench Beta Phase On Hold

The Workbench Beta phase is on Hold until after CarpentryCon, and it is likely that it will be on hold until mid-September. Over the last few weeks, like an unexpected late spring ice storm, situations unrelated to development of The Workbench both personal and professional ([such as the departure of a good friend and colleague]({{ site.url }}/blog/2022/07/thank-you-francois/)) have arisen, which forced me to stop pedaling and gently squeeze the brakes on this project so that the Dovetail does not turn into a fishtail.

The Dovetail #4: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fourth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail.” In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news for The Carpentries Workbench.

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

Announcements

For anyone who has questions about The Workbench, I will be hosting two themed community discussions:

(UTC) Friday 08 July 2022 14:00 (find your time)
(UTC) Tuesday 12 July 2022 00:00 (find your time)

Updates to The Carpentries Workbench

Since 2022-06-08,

The Dovetail #3: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the third post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail.” In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news for The Carpentries Workbench.

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

Updates to The Carpentries Workbench

Since 2022-06-08,

{sandpaper} version 0.5.8 -> 0.6.0
- create_episode() will now accept titles with spaces and UTF-8 characters. A slugified file name will be created from the title. Now you can create a new episode like so: sandpaper::create_episode("안녕 고양이 😹 Hello Kitty!") and the corresponding file name will be: 02-안녕-고양이-😹-hello-kitty.Rmd
- create_episode() now has the variants create_episode_rmd() and create_episode_md(), for lesson developers who want to create episodes of a specific file type.
- create_lesson() gains the rmd = TRUE argument, which allows lesson developers to opt out of creating an R Markdown-based episode if they want.
{varnish} version 0.1.14 -> 0.2.0
- The search field has been disabled to avoid confusion (it is a future endeavour)
- The heading above the sidebar has been renamed to EPISODES to avoid confusion
- The sidebar will stay collapsed across page refreshes
{pegboard} (no updates)
Both the markdown template and R Markdown template now default to creating incubator lessons, as these are more common than lessons that are purely carpentries.

To update your local Workbench installation, open R and use the following code:

The Dovetail #2: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the second post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail.” In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news for The Carpentries Workbench.

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

Updates to The Carpentries Workbench

Since 2022-05-25,

{sandpaper} version 0.5.5 -> 0.5.8
- pull request workflow updated to include validation for lesson accessibility. Links and images that could be improved for accessibility will now be highlighted in the pull request.

The Dovetail: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 25 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first post in a series of posts that we are calling “The Dovetail.” In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast on the current news for The Carpentries Workbench.

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

Updates to The Carpentries Workbench

Since 2022-05-05,

{sandpaper} version 0.5.1 -> 0.5.5
- This incorporates important updates for R-based lessons and introduces the workbench-beta config variable to indicate that a lesson is in the workbench beta phase
{varnish} version 0.1.11 -> 0.1.13
- Workbench beta phase alert added
- dropdown navigation no longer is hidden by the sidebar on XXL screens (thanks @brownsarahm!)
- blockquotes are now more clearly delineated from the rest of the content (thanks @fiveop!)
{pegboard} version 0.2.4 -> 0.2.6
- Link validation no longer treats alt="" as invalid as this can indicate decorative images that are ignored by screen readers.

To update your local Workbench installation, open R and use the following code:

The Carpentries Workbench: Beta Phase and Beyond

Thu, 05 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Updated 2022-10-03 to reflect that the beta URL will not be the permanent URL

This is an ongoing series of blog posts about The Carpentries Workbench, (the next iteration of the [Lesson Infrastructure]({{ site.url }}/posts-by-tags/#lesson-infrastructure)). Find more about our Design Principles, our Path to the Design for the Lesson Website, the Alpha Test of the Workbench, and our Official Announcemnt of The Carpentries Workbench.

TL;DR

We will be transitioning some of the lessons to The Carpentries Workbench in the next few months as a beta test. The beta test will live in parallel to the current lessons for at least two months before fully transitioning. If you are a Maintainer, and would like to have your lesson enter the beta test, please sign up and tell us about your lesson and when is the earliest time for you to start the beta testing.

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 Workbench

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

What is The Carpentries Workbench?

The Carpentries Workbench is a fresh redesign of our lesson infrastructure¹ from the ground up that clearly separates the tools from the content. We hope it will better serve the needs of our community members and create paths forward for improving access, portability, stability, and reliability of our lesson infrastructure as the repertoir of our lesson developers continues to grow.

Following the guidelines we set out in our post on design principles, The Carpentries Workbench is built with R and Pandoc in three custom packages called {sandpaper}, {varnish}, and {pegboard} for deployment, styling, and validation, respectively. It is important to note here that knowledge of R or pandoc is not necessary to build a lesson using The Workbench. The only requirement is a working knowledge of markdown syntax. To find out more about the process we used for validating the usability of the infrastructure, you can read our blog post about the alpha testing and our blog post about the UX testing and design, or if you have 20 minutes to spare, you can watch a video of Zhian’s UseR!2021 talk: “Using R as Community Workbench for The Carpentries Lesson Infrastructure (with slides available here).

The Lesson Infrastructure Commitee: Past, Present, and Future

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Take a moment to browse Greg Wilson’s original HTML lecture for The Unix Shell (2006-11-27) and then head over to the most recent snapshot of The Unix Shell (2021-10-23).

Back then:

markdown was only 2 years old
git was only 3 years old
github did not exist
jekyll did not exist
smartphones and tablets did not exist

The lesson infrastructure has evolved so much in the past 14 years along with the vastly changing landscape of online publishing where it is now easier than ever to publish a website from a handful of markdown documents.

Reflecting on our first Alpha Test of the Lesson Infrastructure Redesign

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

Introduction

This is an ongoing series of blog posts about the next iteration of the [Lesson Infrastructure]({{ site.url }}/posts-by-tags/#lesson-infrastructure). Find more about our Design Principles and our Path to the Design for the Lesson Website

As our community has grown in the past few years, it has become evident that our current lesson infrastructure—where implementing updates involves complex manual steps—does not scale well. It was also evident that the lesson development toolchain was intimidating enough that it was—in and of itself—a barrier to contribution. When this infrastructure was created back in 2016, we had only a few lessons that were maintained by a small group of maintainers who were able to install the toolchain and render them locally. We now have more than 100 official and community-developed lessons combined. Based on the feedback from our much larger maintainer community, it is clear that many find it challenging to keep the infrastructure up-to-date on their own machines.

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).

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.

Upgrading R Lessons to use R 4.0

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Summary and timeline

In April 2020, R officially released version 4.0. One of the major changes was the removal of the default stringsAsFactors = TRUE when reading in data frames. This was tentatively announced in late July 2019 and officially announced in February 2020. While this change has been seen as a good thing by the majority of the R community as a step towards reducing common pitfalls, it produces an interesting pedagogical challenge for some of our lessons that use errors and warnings generated from this default behavior as mechanisms to introduce learners to the concept of factors.

Announcing Glosario

Tue, 28 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

glosario is an open source glossary of terms used in data science that is available online and also as a library in both R and Python. Authors can add glossary keys to a lesson’s metadata to indicate what the lesson teaches, what learners ought to know before they start, and where they can go to find that knowledge. Authors can also use the library’s functions to insert consistent hyperlinks for terms in their lessons in any of several (human) languages, and anyone who has installed the library can use it interactively to look things up while they are programming.

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.

Introducing our New Lesson Infrastructure Technology Developer

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I am super excited to join The Carpentries as the Lesson Infrastructure Technology Developer. Throughout my career, I have worked towards making complicated analytical tasks just a bit easier for scientists through both software and training. The chance to work with the wonderful people at The Carpentries on improving the lesson infrastructure is no short of a dream job!

I have just finished a stint at Imperial College London where I worked with both The R Epidemics Consortium (RECON) and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International to develop tools, templates, and training materials for field epidemiologists to perform reproducible analyses in R. I was previously a plant pathologist where I developed tools for population genetic analysis of clonal organisms as well as tutorials and workshops introducing plant pathologists to R, reproducible research, and data management.