Curriculum on The Carpentries

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.

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.

What Part Two of The Carpentries' Collaborative Lesson Development Training (CLDT) Taught Us About Sustainable Lesson Design

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was first published on LinkedIn. It is republished here with only slight formatting variations to ensure conformity with The Carpentries blog posts style guide.

Fresh off the pilot, we went into the second phase of The Carpentries Collaborative Lesson Development Training (CLDT2), with a clearer understanding of our learners’ needs and a list of ways to make the lessons even better.

The second phase of The Carpentries training helped us fine-tune what we had started: improving lesson flow, refining exercises, and enhancing accessibility features across the board.

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.

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.”)

Building Skills with Generalist Repositories: An Update on the Carpentries + GREI Collaboration

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In late 2024, we launched a collaboration between The Carpentries and the Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI), aiming to explore how generalist data repositories such as Dataverse, Dryad, Figshare, Mendeley Data, Open Science Framework, Vivli, and Zenodo might be more intentionally woven into the data skills we teach. Since then, we’ve taken important steps toward that vision by co-creating new lesson content, running an in-person workshop, and inviting the community into a broader conversation about data sharing and discoverability.

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.

Lessons on Lessons: How The Carpentries' Collaborative Lesson Development Training (CLDT) is Shaping our Approach

Fri, 09 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was first published on Deborah Udoh’s personal blog site, and again on the Software Sustainability Institute’s news and blogs hub. It is republished here with only slight formatting variations to ensure conformity with The Carpentries blog posts style guide.

On the 25th to 28th of March, the Pre-Seeds team participated in Part One of The Carpentries’ Collaborative Lesson Development Training (CLDT). It was an enriching experience, and we are deeply grateful to our facilitators, Toby Hodges, Aleksandra Nenadic, and the larger Carpentries leadership team. We learned a lot and want to share our reflections on what worked well, what could be improved, and how this training will shape our approach moving forward.

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.

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.

Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee Approves the Introduction to MarcEdit lesson

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

Introduction

We are excited to share that the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (LC-CAC) announces the new beta Introduction to MarcEdit lesson. The lesson demonstrates using MarcEdit to profile, manipulate, and enhance library data in the MARC 21 format. It introduces the tools and functionality needed for many processes required for library and information workers working with library MARC data. This lesson is for those who have never used or have a rudimentary knowledge of MarcEdit. The primary learning objective is to provide learners with the necessary foundation to use MarcEdit and know where to seek more advanced skills.

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.

Bridging Communities: The Carpentries and GREI Collaboration

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We would like to share an exciting new collaboration between The Carpentries and the Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI). This collaboration represents a shared commitment to equipping researchers worldwide with the skills and tools needed for effective data and software management, especially within the biomedical research community. GREI was launched in 2022 by the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Data Science Strategy (NIH ODSS) in the USA to foster robust data-sharing practices, recognising the critical need for researchers to make their data accessible, reusable, and impactful across disciplines. At its core, GREI supports a network of repositories designed to accommodate diverse data types, emphasising usability, discoverability, and adherence to the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles. This initiative not only provides researchers with the infrastructure to share their data but also offers guidance and tools to improve data management practices, making it easier to comply with data-sharing policies and maximise the reach of their work. By working together, The Carpentries and GREI aim to align our resources to demystify generalist repositories, enhance workflows for data submission and reuse, and ultimately ensure high-quality, well-documented deposits. But why is this effort so important, and what does it mean for our communities?

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.

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.

Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee Approves a Major Update to the LC Python Lesson

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

We are excited to announce that the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (LC-CAC) has approved a major update to the Python Intro for Libraries lesson.

The lesson demonstrates how to use Python to clean, analyse, and visualise library usage data, providing an introduction to reproducible workflows in Python for library and information workers. While the lesson repurposes some elements from the previous Library Carpentry Introduction to Python, it is a major overhaul that includes a new library-specific dataset, the use of JupyterLab instead of Spyder, and new episodes that use Pandas to tidy a dataset and Plotly to visualise data.

Library Carpentry Curriculum Committee Approves Data Management Plan Lesson

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

We are excited to announce that the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (LC-CAC) has approved a new lesson Data Management Plan Course for Librarians for inclusion in the Library Carpentry curriculum. This course was developed as part of an Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant to UCLA to develop open science lessons for Library Carpentry.

This course provides an introduction to conducting data management plan (DMP) services for librarians. By the end of this course, librarians should be equipped to offer basic DMP review services to researchers.

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.

Apply for 2024 Carpentries Maintainer Onboarding!

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is preparing to onboard the next round of Maintainers. Currently we have 92 Maintainers serving across 48 core lessons. To keep the community healthy, we need to plan for people wanting to step down from their current positions and finding new people to step into the role.

You do not need to be a Git expert to be a Maintainer. If you are familiar with the current Carpentries Git materials, you will have the foundation and support to learn the skills you will need as a Maintainer. Training on lesson maintenance workflows and GitHub skill up sessions will be offered in multiple time zones during onboarding to ensure you have the skills you need to succeed.

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.

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:

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.

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 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 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.

Multiple ways to follow-up after Carpentry trainings: Benefits, impacts and librarians’ wishes

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

What routines do librarians and other information professionals adopt after a Carpentries training, and what other benefits and impacts does this have on their professional life? These questions were the starting point of a survey developed by the Library Carpentry Advisory Group, LCAG in 2021. We reached out to the wider library community with the aim to gain a better understanding of impacts resulting from training, learn more about their engagement with the Carpentries community and to collect their ideas and wishes for current and future training topics. The survey consisted of 28 questions overall and was open for responses between June and August 2021. We disseminated the survey through various channels, including The Carpentries mailing lists and social media channels, regional mailing lists (e.g. Australia, Asia, Africa) as well as direct contacts to former workshop participants and instructors (via host institutions). Overall, 113 responses were received. Not surprisingly, the majority of respondents are based at universities. Further respondents work in public libraries, special libraries or research organizations. Over two thirds (79 respondents) reported that their library already engages with The Carpentries, and several do so in multiple ways. In addition, 19 respondents work at libraries that are not involved yet but they would like to learn more about The Carpentries. Reported job roles (cf. Figure 1, multiple choice) are strongly related to teaching and learning (45.4%), research support roles (research data management 32.4%, scholarly communication 28.7%), and reference and user services more generally (31.5%). Moreover, several respondents manage collections, digital library services, research and development projects and information and data analytics.

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.

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.

Foundations of Astronomical Data Science Launch

Tue, 05 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The long-awaited Data Carpentry curriculum for working with astronomical data is now available to teach! The Foundations of Astronomical Data Science curriculum was actively developed during the COVID-19 pandemic by the Astronomy Curriculum Data Carpentry Committee (ACDC; composed of Erin Becker, Azalee Bostroem, Allen Downey, Rodolfo Montez Jr., Brett Morris, and Phil Rosenfield) and has undergone The Carpentries incubation process including two alpha workshops and two beta workshops. The first official offering of the stable curriculum will be at the summer meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) this June in Pasadena, CA. This is the first new curriculum released by The Carpentries since August 2018 and represents the first curriculum designed for intermediate learners! The curriculum is now ready for any certified Instructor to teach! Keep reading to learn more.

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.

Announcing Our New Curriculum Advisors!

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I am very excited to announce the formation of new Curriculum Advisory Committees to support several of our curricula!

In September 2021, we put out a call for applications to form Curriculum Advisory Committees (CACs) for seven Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry curricula. We received 36 applications, which were reviewed by previous Curriculum Advisors and Core Team members. Twenty-five individuals were invited to join, and twenty-three completed onboarding to become members of the Software Carpentry CAC and three Data Carpentry CACs (Astronomy, Genomics, and Geospatial). Three individuals were invited to join the Data Carpentry Ecology and Data Carpentry Image Processing CACs, which will form after a second round of recruitment in May. Several existing members of the Library Carpentry CAC also participated in onboarding, with the goal of bringing lesson support processes in closer alignment across all of The Carpentries Lesson Programs.

Happy New Year from The Carpentries Executive Director, Dr. Kari L. Jordan

Mon, 03 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I meditate quite often. Last week I participated in a practice whereby we meditated on various aspects of 2021, like resilience, acknowledging our needs, and caring for ourselves and others. During my time of meditation and reflection, I could not help but think about you – The Carpentries community. I will never truly know exactly what this community has endured over the past 24 months. What I do know is that you have shown up, and continue to show up, contributing to The Carpentries’ mission even when it is hard to do. For that, you have my sincere #CarpentriesGratitude.

Make a recurring gift via GitHub Sponsors to support The Carpentries’ curriculum

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Open science practices are at the core of all The Carpentries’ work, and therefore at The Carpentries we are intentional and dedicated to making our lesson materials openly available, collaboratively developed, and up to date. Our community of practice is dedicated to increasing the accessibility of data skills, and the diversity of people who use them. We develop and maintain lessons in foundational computational and data science skills and offer pedagogical training to instructors, empowering positive and effective peer-to-peer instruction. A truly amazing community has grown around our mission, and it is because of the generous support we receive from community members that we are continuing to thrive.

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.

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.

Foundations of Astronomical Data Science - Call for Beta Pilot Applications

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Astronomy Data Carpentry curriculum, “Foundations of Astronomical Data Science” successfully held two alpha workshops in November 2020 and January 2021.

We are seeking community members to host and teach beta pilot workshops with the revised Foundations of Astronomical Data Science curriculum in June - August 2021. Continue reading for more information on the lessons, the alpha workshops, and to apply to host a beta pilot workshop.

The Astronomy Data Carpentry project is an endeavor funded by the American Institute of Physics Venture Partnership Fund, which was awarded to the American Astronomical Society to develop this curriculum (PIs: Azalee Bostroem, Diane Frendak, and Dr. Rodolfo Montez Jr.). The Astronomy Curriculum Development Committee, composed of Azalee Bostroem (Project Lead; University of California, Davis), Dr. Erin Becker (The Carpentries Associate Director), Dr. Rodolfo Montez Jr. (Astronomy Advisor; AAS and AIP liaison), Dr. Brett Morris (Astronomy Advisor), and Dr. Phil Rosenfield (Astronomy and Industry Advisor), were joined by lead curriculum developer, Dr. Allen Downey (Olin College), to create a two-day Data Carpentry curriculum for the astronomical community.

Integration and reuse of Library Carpentry content into curricula

Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Jeff Oliver, Julie Goldman and Konrad Förstner

There is a growing need to teach students professional data handling skills. Luckily, nobody has to start from scratch for this. While the lessons of The Carpentries including the Library Carpentry lesson program are designed to be taught as defined combinations in two-day workshops, they can be reused in other contexts. In this blog post members of the Library Carpentry community describe how they include Library Carpentry lessons in academic curricula and use the training methods to teach computational skills to students.

Introducing R lessons in Japanese

Wed, 24 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Software Carpentry lessons in Japanese

As previously discussed we have a Japanese language team aiming to maintain a community-led translation of the core Software Carpentry lesson. See our previous posts on how we got started and how we manage collaborative translations via GitHub. Our team has grown internationally in the age of online meetings with contributions from Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, and the USA. We hope this will support growing the Carpentries community in Japan and Carpentries lessons for Japanese learners overseas.

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.

Looking Back and Looking Forward: Scaling Collaborative Curriculum Development

Wed, 24 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In February 2018, Data Carpentry was awarded funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support creation of sustainable infrastructure and scalable processes for curriculum development and maintenance. In May 2020, our funding for this initial scaling effort wrapped up. Here we report on lessons learned, work accomplished through this funding, and where our curriculum development and maintenance sustainability efforts are headed in the next few years.

Our primary deliverables for this grant were:

Introducing our new Astronomy Curriculum Developer

Thu, 21 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are ecstatic to welcome Dr. Allen Downey as our new Astronomy Curriculum Developer! Allen’s role is supported by a grant from the American Institute of Physics. His work will focus on developing a set of 3-4 Carpentries-style lessons on data organisation, data management, interactive data visualisation, and publishing data for longevity and interactivity - targeted towards astronomers. Allen will join the team part-time over the next six months to develop and pilot test these lessons. Welcome to the team Allen!

Job Opening to Develop an Astronomy Curriculum for Data Carpentry

Thu, 26 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Datasets in astronomy are ever larger and more complex, and data analysis and visualisation is now essential for astronomical research, yet there are few opportunities for astronomers to become experts in working with these large datasets. An Astronomy Curriculum Development Committee (Azalee Bostroem, Rodolfo Montez, and Phil Rosenfield) has been working for several years, teaching and developing curriculum to meet that need. They have taught Software Carpentry workshops for astronomers at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Winter meeting for the past five years and through surveys and working with the community, identified core modules that need to be developed to teach astronomers relevant foundational skills.

We are Hiring Four New Team Members. Join Our Team.

Tue, 26 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is searching for four new full-time team members to join our global, mission-driven organisation. These new roles will work with and serve our volunteer community - comprised of 50,000 learners, 2,000 instructors, 80 Trainers, and 85 member organisations from research institutions around the world. See below for descriptions and links to apply.

Deputy Director of Instructor Training

We are hiring a Deputy Director of Instructor Training to support our global Instructor Training community, train and onboard new Instructor Trainers (who teach our Instructors), and develop an assessment strategy to examine the impact of our Instructor Training and Trainer Training programs.

Internationalisation of Software Carpentry: System for Translation into Japanese

Thu, 21 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A collaborative effort to translate the core Software Carpentry lessons into Japanese is currently underway. In this post, we outline how we are managing translations on GitHub, what progress we have made, and what we have learned so far.

Assembling a Team of Translators

We recently came up with the idea of translating Software Carpentry lessons into Japanese and have founded a team to reach this goal. Our recent blog post details how we got started, and this post will explain how you can get involved. Our community in Japan has been responsive and incredibly supportive. We are still just getting started, but everyone who has become involved has been enthusiastic and full of ideas. The team includes members who knew each other personally or professionally, as well as people who reached out online but were not a part of the Software Carpentry community.

Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Partner to Support The Carpentries

Wed, 06 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We are generating vast amounts of data, but it is not the data itself that is valuable—it is the information and knowledge that can come from this data. However, we are limited in translating this sea of data into discovery and solutions, because we have a limited set of diverse groups of people with the skills, perspective, and access to work effectively with data. We need to bring people to data—rather than just bringing data to compute or compute to data—and empower them to address their questions, reach their potential, and solve issues that are important in science, scholarship, and society.

The Carpentries in Tōkyō: Adventures bringing Software Carpentry to Japan

Tue, 05 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing Software Carpentry to Japan

There is a growing community that has embarked on a journey of finding missing grammatical particles, debating consistent terminology, and figuring out what a submodule does. All with the goal of providing bilingual software carpentry lessons in English and Japanese. Inspired by the efforts of the Spanish community, we aim to bring multilingual workshops to Japan and provide a Japanese version of the lesson materials for Japanese learners around the world.

Q3 and Q4 Project Work at The Carpentries

Wed, 25 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In May, we shared our vision and goals for our core team’s work in Q2. In this post, we lay out our accomplishments on that work, and also on our Q3 projects. There’s a lot that we’ve been working on! If you’re interested in a particular team’s work, you can navigate directly to their projects using the links below.

Business Team
Community Development Team
Curriculum Team
Instructor Training Team
Infrastructure Team
Membership Team
Workshop Administration Team

The projects we select for our quarterly cycles are designed to give us time to focus on our operational priorities (operational efficiency, accessibility, revenue generation, and compliance), while continuing to perform all of our ongoing work. Ongoing work includes supporting workshops, instructor training events, lesson development and maintenance, communications, and much more! Over the course of the quarter, we share our accomplishments and challenges with each other, stay in touch on how our individual work affects the whole team, and learn from each other.

Continued support from IMLS for Library Carpentry

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In November 2017, the California Digital Library (CDL) announced a two-year Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant funded project to further advance the scope, adoption, and impact of Library Carpentry across the US. The grant enables CDL and the University of California Curation Center (UC3) to host Chris Erdmann, the Library Carpentry Community and Development Director, and his work with community members, Carpentries staff, and governance groups to integrate Library Carpentry as a lesson program, further develop the curriculum and lessons, grow the community of Carpentries instructors with library and information backgrounds, and continue outreach to raise awareness about Library Carpentry and The Carpentries in the broader library community.

Q2 Project Work at The Carpentries

Mon, 27 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Some of The Carpentries team at an Improv session in January 2019

Zip Zap Zop is a team building activity that The Carpentries team loved and stressed over in equal measure at an Improv session we all attended in January 2019. Standing in a circle, the game started out slow and we all felt comfortable with it, enjoyed it even. But as time went by and our facilitator nudged us to pick up the pace, we all experienced the adrenaline and pressure that comes with increased urgency and demand for our attention and whittled-down focus in any activity, and had the opportunity to empathise with the overwhelmed among us, and marvel at the resilience of a select few.

Announcing The Carpentries Curriculum Development Handbook

Wed, 03 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Note (2024-12-09): The Curriculum Development Handbook has been retired. Its content has been incorporated into the new Lesson Developer Handbook, the curriculum for Collaborative Lesson Development Training and other sections of the Community Handbook.

Note (2020-02-03): The Curriculum Development Handbook is contiually being developed, so the links below may change. The main page of the Curriculum Development Handbook can be found at https://cdh.carpentries.org/

A key value of community is the horizontal transmission of culture - sharing mistakes we’ve made and lessons we’ve learned so that things are easier for the next person. In our Instructor Training program, we prepare new instructors to teach existing content using evidence-based teaching methods. The spirit of Carpentries lessons, however, doesn’t lie in reproducing the script faithfully and teaching the content “as is”. Every time our lessons are taught, they’re a little bit different, as Instructors try things out, learn, and (hopefully) contribute back to the lessons so that others can benefit from their experiences. Because of the innovation of our Instructors, and the value our community places on iteration and collaborativity, The Carpentries’ lessons get stronger every time they are taught.

News from the Library Carpentry Maintainer Community and Curriculum Advisory Committee

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

News from the Library Carpentry Maintainer Community and Curriculum Advisory Committee

During the week of 14-17 January 2019, Library Carpentry Maintainers met online to discuss a variety of topics from Communication Channels to Giving Credit. The discussions helped with tackling big questions and understanding how we wanted to work as Maintainers. For a summary (and notes) from the meetings, see:

Instructor Training Curriculum Updates

Mon, 03 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Instructor Training Curriculum is a centrepiece among The Carpentries workshops. It is constantly in use as we bring new Instructors on board, and our engaged Instructor Trainer community brings a steady stream of new ideas for its improvement. This makes for a fun community, interesting discussions… and a lengthy to-do list! In the month of October we organised a “push” on the Instructor Training curriculum, in which we made good progress on backlogged issues, organisation, and usability for new Instructor Trainers. This is not a full “release” – we’re about halfway to where we’d like to be for our next published update – but we are pleased with what we’ve accomplished and hope you will be, too. We are particularly grateful to the community of Instructor Trainers whose feedback and contributions have both inspired this work and helped to complete it!

Curriculum Development Goals for the Rest of 2018

Mon, 22 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As we are entering the last quarter of 2018, and following up on our Curriculum Development Vision post, we want to outline plans for the rest of the year and the beginning of 2019. We plan to post regular updates on curriculum development plans as updates and calls for participation in particular activities or teaching updated materials. For each set of curriculum there are Curriculum Advisory Committees and there is an overall Lesson Infrastructure Committee. If you are interested in being involved in lesson activities, please check out the issues on any of the lessons, send an email to team@carpentries.org, or join one of the lesson-specific email lists for more information or questions.

What constitutes a Library Carpentry workshop?

Tue, 07 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann, Belinda Weaver, John Chodacki, Juliane Schneider, Jez Cope, Kayleigh Lino, Tim Dennis, Cam Macdonell

Given that Library Carpentry currently has nine lessons on its books, and a couple more in draft form, the question of exactly what constitutes an ‘official’ Library Carpentry workshop is timely.

On 17 May, Belinda Weaver opened an issue about this question, proposing what lessons should be taught for a workshop to be badged as Library Carpentry. The issue asked others in the community to comment. The issue received 10 comments from Chris Erdmann, Jez Cope, Kayleigh Lino, Juliane Schneider, Veronica Ikeshoji-Orlati, Greg Wilson, James Baker, and Lauren Ko. Out of the current Library Carpentry lessons, the bulk of comments identified Introduction to Data, the UNIX Shell, Introduction to Git, and OpenRefine as the core lessons that should be taught at a Library Carpentry workshop.

Vision and Plans for Curriculum Development with The Carpentries

Tue, 31 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries has seen a growing interest in individuals, research groups, and institutions wanting to develop lessons for their own domain of research. We are very excited by the potential brought by this growth. Diversifying our lesson offerings means we can extend our reach to new communities, and further disseminate our practices of teaching and collaborative lesson development. We also want to ensure that the lessons we offer remain as the high quality level as our members, Instructors, and learners expect. Here, we outline our vision and plans to support this growth in curricula while sustaining existing lessons and our organisation. Between now and early 2019, we will be focusing on establishing the infrastructure needed to support lesson development and scaling up our lesson offerings. Starting in January 2019, we’ll have new pathways to onboard lessons.

Social Sciences Lessons Published!

Thu, 17 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are excited to announce the initial release of a Data Carpentry Social Sciences Curriculum. This is the first Data Carpentry Curriculum to be released targeted towards researchers outside of the life sciences and provides an opportunity to reach out to new communities.

Peter Smyth has assembled the initial content for these lessons with the guidance of Rachel Gibson, Professor of Political Science at the Cathie Marsh Institute of Social Research, University of Manchester, UK. It was polished during the April 2018 Bug BBQ, and the finishing was done by the lesson Maintainers in coordination with Carpentries staff.

April 2018 Bug BBQ Summary

Thu, 26 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

On 12-13 April, The Carpentries hosted our first joint Bug BBQ. The main objective of this event was to get the lessons for the Geospatial and Social Sciences Data Carpentry curricula ready for release. We also invited contributions to all Software and Data Carpentry lessons during this time. A Bug BBQ is a global, distributed event, where the community gathers to work collaboratively on our lessons. The combination of having dedicated time to look at the lessons and many fresh sets of eyes to examine their contents makes these events excellent for moving new lessons forward. For older lessons, it is a good opportunity to go through any old issues and pull requests, especially ones that require some extra thinking, or that propose significant changes to the lesson.

Announcing the first joint Carpentries Bug BBQ

Thu, 08 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Bug BBQ is a Carpentry-wide event to improve all our lessons – both existing Software and Data Carpentry lessons, and new releases. We welcome contributions from the Community on all of our lessons. If you want to contribute, but you are not sure where to start, head over to the Bug BBQ website where we will highlight how to get involved.

The Carpentries are preparing to publish the Social Sciences and the Geospatial Data Carpentry curricula on Zenodo. The Social Science Lessons will be published in April, and the Geospatial Lessons in June. This will be the first publication for these lessons. We regularly publish our lessons (SWC, DC) to provide stable identifiers for polished versions of the lessons. This enables referenced discussions of the lesson materials and gives contributors a verifiable product to cite on their CVs or resumes.

Call for Contributions: Data Carpentry Ecology and Software Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committees

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In mid-2017, Data Carpentry piloted a Curriculum Advisory Committee (CAC) for the Genomics curriculum. The goals for this committee were to provide general oversight, vision, and leadership for the full Genomics lesson stack, to ensure that the lessons stay up-to-date with existing best practices in the field, and to continue to serve the needs of genomics practitioners attending our workshops. Genomics Curriculum Advisors met after the initial Genomics lesson publication in November to discuss proposed structural and major topical changes to the lessons and will be helping the Genomics Maintainer team to make decisions about these changes as we prepare for a second release this year.

Help Update the Instructor Training Materials

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carpentry Instructor Training curriculum helps prepare new instructors to teach Carpentry workshops. It also impacts instructors’ teaching practices when they teach in other contexts, helping to spread the Carpentry pedagogical model and evidence-based teaching practices around the world!

We last published this curriculum in February. Since then, we’ve taught over 150 new instructors at a dozen training events. We’ve also welcomed ten new Instructor Trainers to our community, with fifteen more to join in September. We’ve learned a lot over the past six months and want to incorporate what we’ve learned before our next publication (scheduled for August 10th). Please join the Trainer community in updating these lessons!

Genomics Interest

Wed, 14 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Last month, we announced an upcoming revamp for the Data Carpentry Genomics lessons and asked you to let us know how you would like to be involved. We’ve had a tremendous amount of interest from the community, with 78 people indicating their enthusiasm for being a part of this effort.

Twenty-nine people volunteered to serve as Maintainers for the Genomics lessons. You will all be receiving an email shortly with more information about this role. Welcome to the Maintainer team!

Call for Contributions: Moving Ahead with Genomics Data Carpentry

Wed, 03 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Way back in March of 2015, a group of 27 Carpentry community members gathered at Cold Spring Harbor for the first Data Carpentry Hackathon on a set of lessons and assessments for Genomics Data Carpentry. From the beginning, we wanted these lessons to be driven by, and useful to the large community of biologists who are (or will be) working with large genomics dataset datasets; perhaps as many as 90% of biologists.

The SQL Ecology Lessons

Mon, 23 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

I am fond of saying that ecologists should not be afraid of big data – instead, we have to deal with small, complex, and poorly connected data. Understanding how we can stay on top of things, data-wise, is becoming more and more important. And some of the practices used to collect a small amount of data do not scale well at all when the amount of data increases, even if slightly.

Collaborative Lesson Development for Semester-long Courses

Mon, 28 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

When did you realize you belonged to the Carpentry community?

My first encounter with the Carpentry community was early in my PhD training, way back when Software Carpentry was teaching programming lessons using brilliantly narrated videos. I knew then that a basic understanding of computer programming was an important part of a strong career in science. What I didn’t expect was to get inspired by a community of scientists and teachers that promotes openness and collaboration throughout their work.

The Python ecology lessons

Mon, 28 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Why We Teach It

In the Beginning

A lot of what are now the Python materials came out of a Data Carpentry Hackathon in 2014 when Software Carpentry was under the Mozilla Science Labs umbrella. At the time, Data Carpentry was a fledgling organization and really only had a small amount of materials on R and Excel. As you can see from the Etherpad from that hackathon, people were pretty excited about getting some of those materials translated to Python.

The R ecology lessons

Mon, 28 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Data Carpentry lessons are aimed at learners who have never programmed before. Learning something new, especially coding, can feel intimidating. Yet learners attending our workshops are motivated as they realize it is a skill they will eventually need to master to be able to manage and make sense of the data they are generating in their research. When learning a programming language, you eventually need to master two things: the syntax of the language (e.g., where the parentheses and the commas go), and the intricacies of the language that will make you write less code and faster code (e.g., taking advantage of the vectorized operations). The first can be learned relatively quickly, the second takes years of practice. One of the advantages of learning the basics of programming during a workshop is that we can teach learners good practices from the start, rather than having to go through the painful experiences that typically accompany self-learning experiences.

Expanding Our Bootcamp Types

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Prompted by a recent email I gave some thought to our plans to expand the types of bootcamps we offer, especially when it comes to a sort of "next level" bootcamp and whether we might offer bootcamps that introduce traditional software developers to the world of scientific programming:

There is significant discussion on the best way to expand Software Carpentry. Longer bootcamps, advanced bootcamps, etc. At some point we need to start actually experimenting with these things, but we have many constraints, most notably a severe shortage of person-hours to devote to developing curriculum and staffing events. Scientists, it turns out, are very busy people!

Software Carpentry Screencasts

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Chris Lasher, who audited the Software Carpentry course long-distance last time around, has put together some screencasts to go with the first few lectures:

The shell (screencast)
Subversion (screencast)

I think this is very cool — if you have feedback, or want to praise him (hint, hint), please drop him a line. I would also be interested in hearing how useful you find these — if there were twenty or thirty covering the whole course, would you actually watch them? And would they help you understand the course material?

HPCWire Interview on Software Carpentry

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

HPCWire recently interviewed me about the Software Carpentry course. Coincidentally, I've started getting patches from new contributors (especially Ralph Corderoy, who did a very thorough review of the shell programming lectures). More would be welcome...

Software Carpentry 3.0

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I am pleased to announce the release of Software Carpentry 3.0 (Final). The web site is up, the mailing lists have been populated, all the tickets have been moved into the project's Trac, and I've submitted a proposal for a wrap-up talk to SciPy'06. It's taken 18 months to complete instead of the 10 I originally planned, but I have a green light to teach the course again this winter at the University of Toronto, and hope that others will pick the course up elsewhere.

Revised Lecture on Teamware

Fri, 05 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I've revised the Software Carpentry lecture on using team tools. I'd be grateful for feedback.

Software Carpentry 1111

Wed, 03 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Revision 1111 of Software Carpentry just went into the repository. All the images are now there (thanks, Nick), along with code fragments and exercises (not as many as I'd like, but enough to get people started). Printed, it comes to 346 pages, but don't do this at home—the supposedly-transparent PNGs are still solid black when printed.

Things I'd like to do (or would like volunteers to contribute in the usual open source way) include:

Corrections Done

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

All the outstanding minor corrections to the Software Carpentry notes have now been made; there are still 21 diagrams outstanding, but they should be in by Sunday. My thanks to everyone who provided feedback—especially Adam Goucher and his very sharp eyes.

341 Words

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The glossary for the Software Carpentry course now defines 341 terms. What may be more interesting (for those of you who have been following the course's development) is what I've taken out:

Code coverage and execution profiling: they really should be in the course, but don't fit into any of the existing lectures.
Date and time manipulation: it isn't part of software engineering per se, but like Unicode, floating-point roundoff, and a dozen other things, this is one of the subjects that everybody just ought to know about. Again, it doesn't fit neatly into any of the existing lectures.
Cross-site scripting, and a few other security-related terms: the security lecture has been completely revamped. It's much less ambitious, but (I hope) more informative.
Everything to do with UML: I've never used it outside of class, and have only ever worked with one person who did. I therefore feel like a bit of a fraud including it in a course on practical software development.

Things that I want to add (eventually):

Client-Side Web Programming Lecture

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Carpentry lecture on client-side web programming is now up (sans diagrams). Comments and corrections welcome.

Last Two Lectures Are Up

Thu, 02 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The last two lectures in the Software Carpentry course are up:

Teamware
Summary

(where "last" means "last in delivery order", not "last to be revised"). They're both fairly rough right now, so high-level feedback would be more useful than pointers to typos.

Second Lecture on Testing Now Online

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The second lecture on testing is now online. As always, comments and corrections are appreciated.

Second Lecture on Object-Oriented Programming

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The second lecture on object-oriented programming is now on the web. This describes operator overloading and static methods, and includes the design patterns material that was in the old design lecture (which has been removed—the general consensus was that it didn't work). As always, comments are welcome.

What Else for Software Carpentry?

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

16 lectures are now in place (more or less), which means I have 8 more to do. The syllabus shows what I've covered already; my current plans include:

unit testing
XML
SQL
more SQL
small-team development process

What do you think the other three should cover (keeping in mind that this is supposed to be a course on basic software engineering, rather than scientific programming)? Options include:

Regular Expressions Lecture is Up

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Carpentry lecture on regular expressions is now on the web. It's a bit of a jump from the previous lecture on design, but given how shaky the latter was, I needed the cuddly warm blanket of working on something I'm sure I understand. As always, comments and corrections to me, please.

Software Carpentry Design Lecture

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I've just posted a completely new lecture on object-oriented design ideas. I'd be very grateful for high-level comments: is it useful material? Do you think that relatively inexperienced programmers will get it? Etc.

First Lecture on Object-Oriented Programming Is Up

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I've split the lecture on object-oriented programming in two; the first one is now on the web (without diagrams). This ties with the rewrite of the style lecture for "most changes since the fall", so comments and corrections would be very welcome.

Eleven days 'til the AAAS workshop...

Debugging Lecture

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The debugging lecture is now up for comments and corrections. It still has the old art work, and the code sample for logging is pending, and it still feels like I'm waving my hands more than in other lectures, so suggestions would be particularly welcome.

Fourth Python Lecture for Software Carpentry

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The fourth lecture on Python for the Software Carpentry course is now up. It covers sets, dictionaries, and a little bit of algorithmic complexity. Comments and criticisms are very welcome.

And if that's too serious for year, check out the web site for the Waterfall 2006 conference ;-).

First Shell Lecture for Software Carpentry is Up

Wed, 04 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The first lecture on using the shell is up on the new and improved Software Carpentry web site. Comments and feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Software Carpentry Introduction revised and on the web

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I have revised the Introduction to the Software Carpentry course. This was the easy one: no diagrams, no code fragments, no glossary entries; the rest will be harder. I'd be very grateful for feedback, comments, and corrections. (And yes, audio will follow, but not today—my nephews are playing Zombies downstairs, and juvenile shouts of, "Eat lead you undead scum!" aren't quite the background I have in mind.

New Year's Schedule for Software Carpentry

Tue, 27 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I'm teaching a cut-down version of Software Carpentry at the IASSE in two and a half weeks. I'll have students half days for the weeks of January 16 and 23, and full days for the week of February 6. That's only 20 lectures (rather than 26), so the question is, what to cut? The answer has wider implications, since this will be the version of the course I take to the AAAS workshop.

Maintaining Correctness

Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I'm re-thinking the lectures in the Software Carpentry course based on feedback from this term's students. I'm going to merge the three lectures on different development processes into one, and use the space that frees up to talk in more detail about programming style and software design—assuming, of course, I can think of something to say that isn't banal.

I also want to talk about the material in an article by Paul Dubois in the May/June 2005 issue of Computing in Science & Engineering called "Maintaining Correctness in Scientific Programs". Here are a few key lines from the introduction:

Software Carpentry course in Nature

Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Nature has run a short blurb about the course I'm putting together on software development skills for scientists and engineers.

Software Carpentry notes are up

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I put an alpha version of the notes for the Software Carpentry course [1] on-line yesterday. Now, I'm looking for a way to convert them into a single PDF document, so that reviewers can download them in one shot. I've found some open source tools that don't do style sheets, and some commercial tools that'll do one page at a time, for money, but nothing so far that strikes me as being any better than "printing" with PDFCreator, one page at a time. Given that there are 31 pages, this is tedious enough that I'd like to find an alternative...