Meeting - 22 May 2023

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.

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 and The Carpentries community calendar.

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

Meeting Minutes

  • Chair: Olexandr Konovalov
  • Timekeeper: Mario Antonioletti
  • Notetaker: Phil Reed

Agenda

  1. Assign notetaker & timekeeper
  2. Sign in & ice-breaker
  3. Review of actions
  4. Announcements
    • In-person and online Centrally-Organised teaching opportunities: University of Sussex & Distributed Research Utilising Advanced Computing (DiRAC) - Danielle Sieh
    • RSECon23 Satellite Event on Training - Friday 8 September 2023, 09:30–17:00, focussed on four themes:
      • Delivery Techniques
      • Material Development
      • Resourcing, staff and costs
      • Skills required by RSEs to become trainers
  5. Guest speaker + Q&A
  6. Instructor Training checkout questions
  7. Wrap-up/AOB

Sign-in

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

  1. Simon Clifford / University of Cambridge (checkout)
  2. David Halliday / Newcastle University
  3. Andrew Walker (he/him) / Oxford University
  4. Mario Antonioletti /SSI-EPCC, University of Edinburgh
  5. Olexandr Konovalov / University of St Andrews
  6. Sherman Lo / Queen Mary, University of London
  7. Danielle Sieh / The Carpentries
  8. Stavrina Dimosthenous (she/her) / Henry Royce Institute, University of Manchester
  9. Phil Reed (he/him) / University of Manchester Library
  10. Sarah Jaffa / she / University College London
  11. Vladimir Visipkov / CLS, London
  12. Georgios (George) Bisbas / Imperial College London
  13. Nilani Ganeshwaran / University of Manchester

No shows:

  1. Giles Greenway / QMUL (checkout)
  2. Emily Chambers / University of Sheffield / (checkout)
  3. Yadira Sanchez / Southampton (checkout)

Actions from last meeting

  1. Phil Reed to provide feedback on how the new lesson template impacts the instruction experience
    • Positive feedback, helps to hide unnecessary instructor info from learners, responsive design when resizing windows.
    • All lessons moved over except Overview in Data and Library Carpentry and incubators.
    • Action closed.

Notes

Ice breaker: what is your favourite font?

Ematic SC, Arial, Comic Sans [yes, really], Kindle old fashionedy, monospaced with good distinguished zero vs capital O or Monika, Latin modern maths in LaTeX, Evenier LT Pro, Open Dyslexic, Calibri, Museo slab serif, Garamond, TNR, Times New Roman, 80s terminal and Nintendo fonts

Announcements

In-person and online Centrally-Organised teaching opportunities: University of Sussex & Distributed Research Utilising Advanced Computing (DiRAC) - Danielle Sieh

  • Some coming up, in person at Sussex, social sciences with Python (new part). Have one instructor so far, looking for others. 4 and 5 July. (See AMY)
  • Distributed research using advanced computing (DiRAC), 24-27 July online, SWC plotting and programming with Python. One instructor confirmed, looking for second. (See AMY)
  • October for the next DiRAC workshop.
  • In-person: Host will provide travel, rooms, meals.
  • Email workshops AT carpentries DOT org or go on AMY.

RSECon23 Satellite Event on Training - Friday 8 September 2023, 09:30–17:00, focussed on four themes:

  • Delivery Techniques
  • Material Development
  • Resourcing, staff and costs
  • Skills required by RSEs to become trainers

Several people in this meeting are signed up to RSECon23.

Instructor Training checkout questions

  • What is required to be a fully-fledged instructor?

    • Three parts:
      1. Make a small contribution to a lesson or glossary.
      2. Take part in an online community discussion session.
      3. Take part in an online teaching demonstration session.
    • Could volunteer to help at these courses above.
    • Centrally organised workshops will take uncertified instructors as helpers.
    • Self-hosted workshops need at least one certified instructor, can have additional people hosting parts.
    • Full checkout instructions and teaching demos

  • How do I see upcoming sessions in AMY?

    • Certified instructors can see workshops.
    • Until then, can only see your profile.

  • Does hosting count like teaching to maintain instructor status? Line manager may not permit time for teaching.

    • No formal agreements for how to keep right now, other than voting for executive council member changes. Recent discussions at instructor calls.
    • Monthly instructor call, second Tuesday of the month (see all community calls).

  • Contributing to materials, such as responding to open issues in familar lesson. Looking at Git example, there are 65 open issues, dating up to 7 years ago. Possibly no intension of resolving some of these. Could there be a system of parking unresolvable issues?

    • Great suggestion.
    • Use good first issue tags, or look in Incubator lessons.
    • Contact lesson maintainers, or Curriculum Advisory Committe for that programme.

  • What is a contribution? Commenting on a recent issue can count.

Wrap-up/AOB

Always looking for presentations and ideas. Even if it only takes 10 minutes.

Sign-up sheet: somewhere in this page: https://hackmd.io/V3ReKkEESzqyCNxWJdulOw

Next meeting: 26 June 2023

Select a repo