# CodeRefinery Autum 2025 - classroom debrief

:::info
- Invited: All classroom hosts and helpers + CodeRefinery team
- Zoom connection details: https://cscfi.zoom.us/j/66165768646
:::

## Agenda

1. Welcome
2. Introductions
3. Round table - experience sharing
4. Open discussion and questions
5. Spring 26 worksshop
6. AOB

## Experience sharing

> Inspirational questions, no need to answer all :)

- Are you listed on https://coderefinery.github.io/2025-09-09-workshop/ and if not, would you like to be?
- How did you meet (online or in-person)?
- Did you host an open room for anyone or a specific group?
- How many attended your classroom?
- Did people show up consistently or did presence decrease?
- What was your experience during the workshop? Any feedback to our hosts/instructors?
- How did you advertise the classroom? 
- Any common issues?
- Did you feel well prepared for the workshop? 
- Anything else you would like to share with us and other hosts/helpers?
- Motivational factors: credits? snacks? drinks?
- Blockers: did anyone mention any blocker that prevented them to attend? (overlapping teaching/work/events/conferences...)

### HI - Reykjavik, Iceland

Ebba, Hemanadhan

We hosted 3 days locally, open for everyone who registered. 12 registered. 3 showed up in the first day, but started declining the next days.
It is nice to have the helpers meeting in zoom.
Some people were using R and not Python and we needed help on that

Channels of communication for reaching out at the university level were fine, but it was unfortunately not timely

The local assistance during the local workshops were efficient and needed.

We don't know how many of our Icelandic participants attended only online. May be there is a way to find out?

### DTU - Copenhagen, Denmark

Attendance:

Subject # of participants
Version control 12-15
Reproducible research 13-15
Social coding 3
Documentation 6
Jupyter notebooks 4
Automated testing 5
Modular code dev 4

- 4-5 people attended most events, 15 at max, 50 signed up (!!!)
- interview format of lessons good
- collab notes appreciated
- drop off, but people that attended thought it was good
- could be advertized more, always a struggle, but posters and e-mails worked, news on internal pages, calendar was done
- potentially confusion about where to sign up
- mainly researchers, less students

### CSC - Espoo, Finland

Attendance:
- 7-8 people registered, open to everyone from FI
- only first week
- 3 people for day 1+2
- 1 for day 3 (other 2 informed why they did not join)
- advertisement: in CSC training calendar
- happy about exptert helpers, possibility to ask about all kinds of other questions
- difficult: How to get value through of in-person vs watching alone

### KTH - Stockholm, Sweden

Attendance: 7
RISE + ENCCS + KTH

- advertisement: KTH calendar, NAISS training newsletter, managed to reach out to Karolinska and Stockholm uni
- on-site: people appreciated classroom learning experience,
- only 3 days, 2 people asked for more days
- enthusiastic crowd
- could advertise more earlier on

### UiO - Oslo, Norway

Attendance:
-15 registered, not all showed up, core of about 6 people all 3 days, some only joined day 1 (one checked for their group, others needed to go to other classes), 3 days is not easiest to ask students/researchers
- outreach could be more. started in August (july + august not best time to reach out, due to holidays), late spring may be good to already reach out
- people that stayed were very happy
- good to reach out to helpers (5! almost one helper per person)
- sign up could be done better, both were mentioned on UiO page, could be done more smoothly
- target a bit more research groups to participate together
- no posters -> could try next time

## Virtual classroom experience

- First days many visitors, even needed breakoutrooms, later not many joined
- Some conversations about best practices, not only questions
- Could be advertised a bit more also by instructors

## Discussion

Would it be better to have one registration with CodeRefinery only? And we share people who signed up in your country/uni.
- MM: Nice if CR could manage registrations centrally, could use indico as well.
- JSH: Nice to follow in own system who signed up, good to have the contact.
- TP: Would it be possible to have a "Sign up to in person session [DropDown_Place]" entry, which clearly states, that you will receive additional mails from the local hosts? And then forward those who request to the respective hosts.
- Having one option per place as its own item will be too crowded.
- Can be done. Keeping the registration form as short and "easy" as possible
- Info can be forwarded, we might just need to update the privacy policy
- OR: Mention in registration form to look on events page about info/regsitration
- Disadvantage: People have to enter their data multiple times for the same event.

- RL: LinkedIn: Are we tracing tags?
- Only mentions, not more at this time.

Would be nice to look deeper into our data, let Samantha know if you would like to do it or know someone who would be keen on diving deeper into the data we have available.
We have:
- stream watchers per country per timpoint (?) - twitch
- notes editors
- contributors to exercise repos
- lesson page visitors (per country etc)
- Youtube watches
- Registration data

## Spring 2026 workshop

17.-19. and 24.-26. of March 2026
-> compact format 2x3x half days
Exercises where they make sense (+30 min compared to spring 2025 workshop)

Jupyter will be removed from the workshop schedule and a new session on "responsible coding with AI tools" will be added.
- reason for removal of Jupyter?
- most mentioned when we asked "Which topic could be left out"
- Often used in programming teaching -> people are familiar
- Python centric ; we might still add R examples to the lesson material
- We will still provide video to watch on own time
- Lesson materials will remain, just not part of main workshop

Interest in hosting a classroom in spring 2026:
- Imperial College, UK
- Lumi AI Factory hub, Otaniemi, FI
- DTU, Jitka S. Hansen, [e-mail]
- KIT, Michele Mesiti, [e-mail] (try again after the Spring 2025 fail in generating enough interest)
- UiO, Elisa P
- ...

You can also let us know later by message to [e-mail]