Welcome and introduction

What do we want to get out of this workshop

  • Introduction of instructors and helpers

  • Each instructor can say what we want to get out of the instructor training

  • But we want to know from everybody and collect these in the live notes

Goals for this workshop

Goals for this instructor training

  • Give future instructors the tools and confidence to teach best software practices and tools.

  • Motivate new instructors to take up lessons, remix them, and to contribute.

  • Get feedback to improve the material as well as our collaboration model.

  • For us to learn how we can support related efforts and collaborate.

  • Catalyze and form new networks and collaborations of teachers and trainers of practical scientific computing.

Giving confidence

Goal number one should be that we give participants the confidence to independently apply the tools or knowledge learnt. This is more important that giving a “complete” overview. [Lucy Whalley gave this great comment at one of our workshops]

  • You don’t have to know everything to use (or teach) something.

  • For the large majority of topics we teach, there are many resources online which provide how-to guides or tutorials. And the Stack Overflow answer bank isn’t getting any smaller. So we need to ask why do people attend in-person sessions if there is information freely available? Our impression is that it is for confidence building, identity formation, perhaps signposting to resources.

  • This also links with building a welcoming/inclusive environment: for example, imposter syndrome, which disproportionately affects under-represented groups (link), can manifest as low self-confidence –> building the confidence of students in the classroom may lead to a more diverse community.

Tools for this workshop

We always start workshops with these:

Code of Conduct

  • We follow The Carpentries Code of Conduct.

  • This is a hands-on, interactive workshop.

    • Be kind to each other and help each other as best you can.

    • If you can’t help someone or there is some problem, let someone know.

    • If you notice something that prevents you from learning as well as you can, let us know and don’t suffer silently.

  • It’s also about the little things:

    • volume

    • font size

    • generally confusing instructor

    • not enough breaks

Overview of the lessons and a typical workshop

Here the instructor gives an overview of the lessons and a typical workshop.

What we do differently?

  • Planing, teaching material available in advance and not PDF slides

  • Different roles (instructor, host, hackmd, …)

  • GitHub projects board so all boxes are checked

  • Helper recruitment and breakout room planning

    • Designing for this as soon as you open registration

  • Less is more

  • Welcome session and “outro” session

  • Clearly defining learning outcomes

  • Asking for feedback, encouraging feedback

  • Manual

  • Screen-sharing

  • Using lesson templates

  • Lesson review on GitHub

  • Sharing material instead of being protective