Oxford University on The Carpentries

Oxford, One Year On

Wed, 25 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Philip Fowler recently posted a nice study of the impact last year's Software Carpentry bootcamp at Oxford had on its participants. The key finding for me is that 10 of the 13 respondents to his survey agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, "A year on, the workshop really encouraged me to change how I do my research." If you'd like to help us gather similar information from participants at other bootcamps, please get in touch.

Feedback from the Oxford DTCs

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Having helped at two previous bootcamps (Oxford last year and UCL last month), a couple of weeks ago I had my first attempt at organising one at the University of Oxford, primarily aimed at students from the Doctoral Training Centres. Mario Antonioletti and Shoaib Sufi from the Software Sustainability Institute kindly did most of the instructing (I only ran two sessions), and Mario has already written a blog post with his perspective. Here I want to report the feedback we received from attendees and give some of my thoughts on the experience.

Experiences with the Oxford DTCs

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Mario Antonioletti has posted his experiences on being a first-time instructor at our bootcamp for the Oxford doctoral training centres, our second in Oxford, last week.

More Oxford feedback

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Following on Phil's analysis of the feedback from the first Software Carpentry workshop in Oxford, here are the round-the-room comments from the attendees, helpers and instructors, good and bad...

Good

Learned something.
Mercurial, very useful yet simple. Can apply straight away.
Practical at end seemed useful way of tieing everything together.
Doing things in synch with lecturers.
Scientific approach to programming.
Whole approach.
Good overview of the key concepts and foundation to learn more.
Focussed.
Course as a whole is good.
Thorough - basic to advanced - and see new ways to do basics.
Good practice, can take forward.
Best practice.
Really good overview and intro to things not heard of before but would be very useful (version control, MDAnalysis).
Make and use for things other than C.
Other instructors chipping in on current instructor was good.
Loved it, especially version control and make.

Bad

Keeping up with the instructors typing on the projectors, so slow the pace.
Resources and case-studies from the simple examples to complex examples.
Would like more of a chance to apply what was learned with the instructors around, or at least feedback on a plan.
Most sessions ran over.
Problems with later aspects of Python.
Balance between beginner and advanced - always wasting someones time.
Knowing simpler Python commands might've helped beforehand.
Sometimes a bit too fast.
More time for exercises.
Target the course a bit more to their area.
Helps to start with, but good to have more courses and more on each area.
More time to work on problems and work through case-studies.
Downloading all the files for every exercise.
Days away from work.

More Tips

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Philip Fowler, who recently hosted a bootcamp at Oxford, has written a 5-point guide for people who are thinking about doing it themselves—we hope you'll find it useful.

Oxford Wrap-Up (with charts!)

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The first Software Carpentry workshop in Oxford has wrapped up, and by all accounts was a big success. Philip Fowler, the host, has posted about running the workshop ("everyone sat up a bit straighter during version control...") and also done an analysis of what participants think they learned. In addition, Aron Ahmadia has given us some detailed feedback on how we could improve things the next time 'round. Our thanks to everyone involved—we're looking forward to a return visit soon.