Debriefing on The Carpentries

2016 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefings, Rounds 04 and 05

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

New lesson materials

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

2016 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 03

Thu, 11 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On Tuesday, February 9th, we ran the 3rd round of Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing Sessions. Rayna and Raniere hosted the morning debriefing session. The even session was cancelled due to low attendance.

New lesson materials

Blogging as a Collaborative Git Exercise. The SFU group created a new Git exercise in which pairs of learners wrote guest blog posts for the others site. Then learners experienced conflict resolution with a controlled lesson where paid edited the same line of the guest blog post. This was an engaging exercise that allowed learned to see successful collaboration and conflict resolution. Stay tuned for a dedicate blog post from Bruno Grande about the exercise.

What worked well

A 5-day Hybrid Data / Software Carpentry Workshop. The 2016-01-25-Utrecht group covered a lot of material in this 5 day workshop (Spredsheets, OpenRefine, Python 3, Unix, SQL, Git, Make, and HPC)! While most of the materials were used as is, updates to the Data Carpentry Python lesson have already been pushed and merged.

2016 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 02

Fri, 05 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On January 26, we ran the 2nd round of Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing Sessions. Rayna and Christina hosted the morning debriefings while Bill and Raniere hosted the evening debriefing. A topic of interest today was on installations. Read on for details.

Thoughts on the “check installation” scripts

There is in an ongoing discussion about whether or not the “check installation” scripts for workshop pages should be updated. So, we asked the attendees how often these were being using and how useful they were. Some comments we received were:

2016 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 01

Tue, 12 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On January 11, 2016 we ran the 1st round of post-workshop instructor debriefing of the calendar year! The mentoring committee ran 22 debriefing session in 2015, and we are exciting about continuing to host and improve these sessions this year.

Interestingly, all instructors present participated in 3-day format Software Carpentry workshops. Read on to find out more about the changes made, what worked well, and what didn’t.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 22

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

There were relatively few attendees at the 22nd round of debriefing for instructors on November 10, but we thought we'd include a few quick notes about two specific topics: using Software and Data Carpentry workshops to reach out to potential users of high-performance computing (HPC) resources, and exploring new lesson materials related to databases.

High Performance Computing

University of Manitoba hosted a Software Carpentry workshop at the end of October in conjunction with Compute Canada. In addition to the normal half-day lessons in Unix shell, Git, and intro to Python, this workshop featured an introduction to using WestGrid/Compute Canada resources on the afternoon of the second day. The instructor for this workshop, Hossein Pourreza, said that this last lesson module was used as a capstone for helping reinforce and integrate material from the previous lessons, and appeared well-received by the students. Given that there are few training opportunities for using the cluster, this appears to be a great way to introduce new potential users to the basic tools they'll need to get started with larger-scale analysis.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 21

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 20

Sun, 01 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On October 13th, the mentoring subcommittee held the 20th round of debriefing for instructors. At this round, we have a great discussion text editors, workshop organization and challenges for learners.

Adrianna Pińska wrote a great post about the workshop in Johannesburg that you should check out.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 19

Wed, 28 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On September 29th the mentoring subcommittee held the 19th round of Instructor Debriefing and had some interesting discussions about our lessons and opportunity for learners after the workshop.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 18

Thu, 15 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On September 15th, the mentoring subcommittee held the 18th round of debriefing for instructors. At this round, we have a great discussion about teaching (or not) branches during the Git lesson and about Python packages used in examples.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 17

Wed, 09 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The mentorship committee held their latest round of debriefing for instructors of recent workshops on Tuesday, September 1. Then, on Friday September 4th mentorship committee met for a regular bi-weekly meeting. Some comments from the committee meeting have made their way into this debriefing post.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 16 (morning)

Fri, 28 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The mentorship committee held their latest round of debriefing for instructors of recent workshops on Tuesday, August 18. This post highlights the themes discussed in both the morning and evening sessions. Our participants included multiple levels of experience, including new instructors and experienced instructors who were preparing to teach again soon. The most difficult aspects of their experiences are described below, as well as things that work well and may assist in ameliorating problems.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 15

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 14

Tue, 04 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On July 21 the mentorship team ran the 14th round of instructor debriefing session and received feedback from workshops at the NIH, UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 13

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 12

Fri, 26 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The mentoring subcommmittee hosted instructor debriefings on 23 June 2015 to discuss recently completed workshops. We are delighted that so many new instructors are joining us at these sessions as a way to prepare for upcoming workshops, and welcome anyone else interested to attend as well. Below we highlight a few discussion points from our sessions, including issues with lesson pacing and Python installation, as well as tips on using the etherpad and GitHub organizations. A more in-depth synopsis of a recent workshop can be found in this fantastic post on Raniere Silva's blog.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 11

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 10

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The mentorship team ran the 10th round of instructor debriefing session on May 26. Thanks to David Dotson, Daniel Chen, Sahar Rahmani, Christina Koch, David Merand and Laurent Gatto for feedback on their workshops. Rémi Emonet and Fan Yang, instructors at upcoming workshops, also attended.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 9

Wed, 13 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This week the mentorship team ran the 9th round of instructor debriefing session. Thanks to Andrew MacDonald, Doug Latornell, Evan Morien, Ewan Barr, Isabell Kiral-Kornek, Jackie Milhans, Kara Woo, Karl Broman and Tiffany Timbers for the great feedback of the workshops at Northwestern University, Simon Fraser University, Swinburne University of Technology, University of Melbourne and Washington State University.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 8

Fri, 08 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The mentorship team met last week for a discussion with instructors who recently taught, including workshops at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and University of Texas at Arlington (the latter of which was taught by both authors of this post). Three important issues emerged during our discussion: recording the instructor's shell code, using example scripts to model increasing complexity in coding, and preparing instructors/helpers with answers to challenges.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 7

Tue, 14 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The mentorship team held our latest round of post-workshop debriefing sessions for instructors who taught recently. Instructors from workshops at Clemson University, University of Miami, University of Melbourne, University of Oklahoma Libraries, Harvard School of Public Health, and Weill Cornell Medical College joined us for our discussions, as well as a few new instructors who will be teaching in coming weeks. Here's a recap of common themes and highlights:

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 6

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

2015 Post-workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 5

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At our fifth round of post-workshop debriefing this week, we discussed workshops held at the New York Academy of Sciences, the University of Oslo, and the University of British Columbia. This was a very instructive meeting with important lessons learned from the perspective of both new and veteran instructors. One of the key take-home lessons is that new instructors would benefit from attending an instructor debriefing prior to doing their first workshop.

2015 Post-workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 4

Fri, 27 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We had our fourth post-workshop debriefing of the year this week, in which we discussed recent workshops at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and Michigan State University. All four instructors from the Krakow workshop attended the debriefing and we had a fairly in-depth discussion about that workshop

2015 Post-workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 3

Wed, 11 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We had our third post-workshop debriefing of the year yesterday, in which we discussed several recent workshops. The most important point was probably that workshops are running more smoothly today than they did a year ago, even for first-time instructors.

2015 Post-workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 2

Thu, 05 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Greg Wilson and I recently hosted a second post-workshop debriefing session for January to capture more experiences and lessons learned from instructors in the field. This meeting was attended by 10 instructors covering four recent workshops. We discussed how the workshops went, what worked, what didn't, and what could be improved.

Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 1

Wed, 21 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In the first two weeks of January 2015, 14 Software Carpentry workshops were held at various locations. Every workshops brings its share of lessons learned and new experiences, particularly with new instructors coming online. On January 14, Greg Wilson hosted a post-workshop debriefing meeting attended by 21 instructors from 10 recent workshops. We got together to discuss how the workshops went, what worked, what didn't, and what could be improved.