# Meeting - 23 January 2023

[toc]

## Meeting Info

This is the UK Carpentry Community space for the UK Carpentry instructors, helpers and workshop coordinators (or anyone involved in training tech to researchers in general and outside of the UK) to get to know each other better, update the commmunity about developments, discuss issues and ideas, and encourage collaboration.

During these meetings, we will be conforming to [The Carpentries Code of Conduct](https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/policies/code-of-conduct.html).

**Meeting schedule: meetings happen on 4th Monday each month, 16:00-17:00 UK time, BST (UTC+1) or GMT (UTC+0) depending on the time of the year**

**Meeting details are shared via [local-uk mailing list](https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/local-uk) and [The Carpentries community calendar](https://carpentries.org/community/#community-events).**

- [Community's HackMD workspace](https://hackmd.io/team/local-uk?nav=overview)
- [Previous & upcoming meetings](https://hackmd.io/V3ReKkEESzqyCNxWJdulOw#Past-amp-Upcoming-Meetings)
- [Meeting notes template](https://hackmd.io/hgl1tYhOTTqDsIDwjArE5w)
- [Chairing rota](https://hackmd.io/@local-uk/rkPK1Si7F)
- [Guest speaker sign-up](https://hackmd.io/@local-uk/rkkzBTLOd)

**Zoom URL:** https://zoom.us/j/95360073649

## Meeting Minutes

- **Chair:** Aleksandra Nenadic
- **Timekeeper:**
- **Notetaker: Andrew Walker**

### Agenda
0. Assign notetaker & timekeeper
1. Sign in & ice-breaker (what musical instrument do you play / do you want to play)
1. Review of actions - none this time
2. Announcements (also see below)
- [SSI's Collaborations Workshop 2023, 2-4 May, hybrid, Manchester](https://software.ac.uk/cw23)
- **Theme: Sustainable Career Development: looking after your software, your career, and yourself**
- [Registration is open](https://software.ac.uk/news/registration-open-collaborations-workshop-2023-cw23)
- Call for submissions (for mini-workshop/demo sessions, and lightning talks) will open later this week - deadline is 28 February
- teaching demos for people to have opportunities to practice teaching, also how to give feedback for an added value (and also something for trainers as well as trianee instructors)
- [collaborative ideas session](https://software.ac.uk/cw23/discussion-session) - any suggestions/ideas?
- Panel on Sustainable Career Development - suggestions on who to invite?
3. Group disucssion: **how best to provide teaching experience and help newly certified instructors and helpers**
4. Instructor Training checkout questions
5. Wrap-up/AOB

### Sign-in

Name/pronoun if you like/ institution / optionally put "(checkout)" if you are here for the Instructor Training checkout:

1. Aleksandra Nenadic, she/her, SSI/Uni of Manchester
2. Mario Antonioletti, he/him, SSI/EPCC/University of Edinburgh
3. Andrew Walker, he/him, University of Oxford
4. Phil Reed, he/him, University of Manchester
5. Colin Sauze, he/him, National Oceanography Centre
6. Sarah Jaffa, she, University College London
7. Juan Herrera, he/him, EPCC (The University of Edinburgh)
8. Nilani Ganeshwaran, she/her, University of Manchester
9. Fran Baseby, she/her, Heritage Collections, University of Edinburgh
10. Lucia Michielin, she/her, Centre for Data, Culture, & Society, Edinburgh University
11. Stavrina Dimosthenous, she/her, Henry Royce Institute, The University of Manchester
12. Brynn Elliott, The Carpentires, Accessibility Manager, Wyoming US
13. Evgenij Belikov, he/him, EPCC/University of Edinburgh
14. Olexandr Konovalov, he/him, University of St Andrews

### Notes

#### Actions and announcments

* No actions from last meeting
* [Blog post on carpentries blog](https://carpentries.org/blog/2023/01/Multiple-ways-to-follow-up-after-Carpentry-trainings-Benefits-impacts-and-librarians-wishes/) re. library carpentries survey from 2021.
* Workshop being planned for library carpentries with White Rose Libraries (Leeds, Sheffield and York) by Manchester. Early stages. Maybe March / April
* Almost finished translation into Ukrainian: https://carpentries-i18n.github.io/python-novice-gapminder/ (work in progress). Anybody who could help with Git and Bash please get in touch (also R and other lessons). Language knowledge is more important than knowledge of the content.
* Maybe lesson translation call in future (in this slot)
* Colin doing his first worksop in new job in Liverpool - any other local instructors?
* Last week Andrew Walker ran a workshop with Chris Wood (EPCC) using oceonographic (wave modelling) data for the python component - will be run in Edinburgh and repeated online. This will be followed by an intermediate version. This is funded via a NERC Advanced Training Short Course award to EPCC
* SSI collaborations workshop will happen on 2-4 May hybrid (in person in Manchester) https://www.software.ac.uk/cw23 - last one for SSI's third round of funding. Registrations are open

#### Group disucssion: how best to provide teaching experience and help newly certified instructors and helpers

Background information: A large proportion of instructors do not convert to being active instuctors after attending insturctor training or even never go on an teach at a workshop (some past unofficial data for the UK community indicate this number is 60-70%). What are the obstacles they are facing in starting to teach at workshops? How can we help fresh instructors and helpers with gaining teaching experience and becoming active and integrated members of the community?

##### What problems do we see for new instructors?

- instructors not being able to volunteer their time outside of their institutions or at all due to other work commitments
- No reward/recognition for teaching outside ones own institution (though can extend your network)- in the past it has been noted that people are unwilling to teach/volunteer outside their own institutions.
- instructors not willing to teach in an unknown environment where they do not know the workshop organiser or the training team
- Can we give more details in call for helpers/instructors, e.g. how many students, what experience level, who else will be teaching/helping
- lack of teaching/observing experiences/opportunitites or not being able to discover them easily
- Carpentries email call for instructors
- [Carpentries upcoming workshops](https://carpentries.org/upcoming_workshops/)
- lack of opportunities to try themseves at teaching in friendly and safe environments where it is made clear it is "OK to make mistakes" (e.g. teach to a friendly colleague)
- the feeling of high expectations placed on instructors? the imposter syndrome after seeing experienced instuctors teach easily/fluently?
- Never taught live-coding before and being under the impression that this means knowing all the script by heart
- lack of local opportunities - hard to juggle between local commitments and travel
- Only knowing one lesson or part of one lesson and not enough of the syllabus.
- A lack of teaching opportunities in the areas they are most comfortable in. It probably helps for your first instructing to be on the lesson who's topic you are most familiar with. Many more experienced instructors often run workshops at their own institutions without seeking external help.
- lack of confidence or not familiar with the domain of the attendees
- Teaching in an environment where the helpers are more experienced than the instructor can be daunting (seen more of a threat than an opportunity or fear of being judged).
- From the organisers point of view you might want to have confidence in the quality of the instructor before you put them on your course.
- lack of mentorship? I (Andrew W) have acted as a mentor for new instructors / instructors going through training before and I think that helped (I think they all went on to instruct) [+1: in our University we have 5 instructors already, we can teach together. If someone is alone, lack of critical mass of instructors in own institution makes things harder]
- Lack of opputunities (in-person workshops) to shadow or act as helpers [+1 - I always recommend people do one full workshop as a helper before being an instructor, even if they have completed the training, just gives an idea of the flow of the workshop and see otehr instructors in action]
- Can we get potential/new instructors to attend a workshop (as a learner) themselves to try and get more familiar with the material? Are some instructors here willing to reserve a place for such a person on their own workshops?
- No / hard to discover local networks of instructors. [+1: I think there must be many qualified instructors at UCL that I (Sarah J) have never met, so we find it hard to contact them and just recruit the people we know already]
- Worried that they could not answer questions raised by learners.
- Worried that they could not resolve problems with set-up/installation if something deviates from the standard/planned (eg Spyder vs Jupyter, Mac vs PC).
- Not belonging to a big RSE or similar group with IT and teaching experience where they could be mentored/eased into teaching by helping first, then trying to teach a bit of the curriculum they are most comfortable with, then teaching something completely new to them
- First time teaching, a new instructor could try a part of a lesson, not full morning or afternoon session. But is this something that is expected by organisers/instructors and also viable to achieve if travel is involved?
- Andrew W: many groups (including RSEs) in the UK run training and it makes it more difficult to people outside these groups that have instructors to get engaged - should they develop external instructors, staff development and PGR development programmes perhaps make this difficult
- Stavrina D: What helped me - contact with member of comunity then reached out to find local contacts. Became difficult due to own institution not being a partner organisation (needed to pay for instructor training). Benifit of support and mentorship.
- Hard to justify institutional membership because we often only have access to project grants. Hard to justify paying for whole institution via that. Two ways to get access. See https://carpentries.org/become-instructor/

##### How can we help with the above problems?

- Could we do more to intentionally bring in new external instructors to help them learn and teach their first workshop, even when we have sufficient instructors ourselves? This way they'd still have an experienced instructor with them and would only need to do part of the lesson.
- Very long shoot but maybe embedded Carpentry Instructor training in one of the HE recognised academic development frameworks. In Edinburgh there is IAD, not sure how it works elsewhere. I know Ed Wallace tried this road before but not sure if it lead to anything concrete [+2 I (Andrew W) embedded my Carpentry instructing experiance in my FHEA (Advance HE) application - I'm happy to chat to anybody going through the (A)FHEA process.] [Me too, I put it in my SFHEA case studies @Phil]
- When there is a local group of instructors: maintain a community, run mentorship program, make all efforts to involve everyone into events and give them some opportunity to teach what they like.
- If there is a newly qualified instructor in an institution, they may be not aware of others in the same place. Or when people move places. Help them to get in touch. If someone is alone, maintain connection with them so they will be then a part of some local/regional/UK community.[+1]
- Edinburgh has successfully been running a cross department set of instructors (mainly within the University of Edinburgh but also extending to other local institutions). This has allowed new instructors to be involved with local courses. You need a critical mass for the group to work and be self sustaining. I think you have 6 people from Edinburgh on this call and then 5 from Manchester?
- My group at UCL ([Advanced Research Computing](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/advanced-research-computing/)) would be **very happy** to hear from anyone London based who wants to help or instruct. We currently staff most of our workshops internally and are getting pushback for using up hours that other projects need, so we need more outside contacts but just don't know where to find them! Feel free to email me if you are in or near London and want to help instruct: [e-mail]
- grouo
- Could we use some of these calls for teaching demos - either in the main room or in breakouts - would experienced instructors be willing to come listhen someone teach for 30 minutes or so? [+1]
- (Re)create mentorship scheme. This would need somebody to organise the process, find mentors, and pair these with mentees. Probably also needs support for mentors in terms of expectation setting etc.
- Capture stories to help people deal with teaching for the first time. I remember how much easer lecturing became after I saw how difficult a professor using the lecture space before me found the whole process.
- Perhaps a scheme for people who are self-learning with Carpentries materials could request an instructor/helper to go through queries one-to-one (async or sync) for those who cannot make a full workshop or lesson. This may be more desirable for the qualified instructors who have never taught a lesson since.
- offer joint delivery of courses where new or pending instructors can observe but also teach some of the sections
- Could RSE lobby for BCS to officially recognise certification and for institutions to pay instuctors
- (Maybe very simple) Clearly advertise instructor checkout opportunities and continuous communication avenues?
- Could we advertise in our local-uk list? Have a sign up rolling sheet?
- doesn't the carpentries already have one of them? I think this is now being done via the AMY web system.
- All of UK seems too big an area, can we split into smaller lists? We can't pay for travel so can only recruit locally.
- Could we have a "local lead" for various regions who maintains a mailing list, and everyone going throught instructor trainig gets added to their local list and anyone running a workshop can contact the local lead to forward requests to that list?
- Looks like using these calls for teaching demos would have to be split like the Carpentries are doing - teaching demos and community discussions - perhaps we could/should just utilise the existing infrastructure instead of doing anything extra/additional