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tags: Carpentries

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# Relation to Carpentries

[TOC]

:::warning

**First internal meeting** on the topic was held on 6.7.23 at 13 CEST (Samantha, Richard, Radovan)

-> **Actionpoint**: RB to convert one lesson (reproducible research or socieal coding?) to carpentries format to get experience with incubator
-> then we maybe write a blogpost on thoughts about it and decide if we like it or not

**Next internal meeting** in end of July/August

Then meeting with Carpentries (Toby and Jean (?))

:::

## I am interested in participating a CR internal meeting on the topic

- Samantha
- Richard
- Radovan
- Diana
- Stephan
- Matias (in August)

## Definitions and links
- Carpentries lesson program: https://carpentries.org/workshops-curricula/
- Incubator: https://carpentries-incubator.org/
- Carpentries workbench: How Carpentries lesson material is developed: https://carpentries.github.io/workbench/
- Carpentries workbench lesson example: https://carpentries.github.io/sandpaper-docs/example.html

## Current CR lesson format

## Thoughts on the topic of relation to Carpentries

* When CodeRefinery stops what will become of the lessons? Who will carry them?
- but CR is not planning to stop anytime soon so this is not a high priority worry

* Other programs popping up, re-inventing same thing, without knowing that CodeRefinery exists
* Carpentries could give visibility, collaboration instead of redoing, make collaboration easier

* Contributing CR to Carpentries?
- CR could still be maintainer, control the content
- big changes might not be as easily possible (?) -> Q to Carpentries
- avoid: changes that are not merged back into basic lessons
- what is the plan for divergence? (e.g. openrefine for social sciences, openrefine for ecology, ...)
- tabs could solve this, have only one base lesson and different fields examples in tabs
- lesson format differences sphinx vs workbench
- are tabs possible (for Python/R/C++ examples)?
- is code highlighting possible?
- CR wants to preserve history of lesson materials
- contributors
- citation (does Carpentries have a way for doing that easily already in place?)
- can lessons be grouped?
- CR as lesson program rather than 8 individual lessons?
- how do install instructions work?
-

* Do we want to connect more to learners/teachers/lesson developers?
- mainly lesson developers
- Carpentries format makes contributions easier and looks polished
- Carpentries could connect us to more developers (which also would come with more learners)

* Worry but unknown if it is an issue: standardization issues that might slow down actions or make things impossible in the future

* How to make it easy for others to take only parts of the lesson
-> needs easy solution without having lots of copies sitting somewhere
- as far as we know this is not solved yet

## Becoming a carpentries lesson in the incubator/ Carpentries lesson program

### Advantages
- Huge increase in numbers of learners
- Huge increase in visibility
- ... leading to more contributions
- Professional staff to support lessons and teaching
- Professional support to train other trainers
- Professional support in all the basic infrastructure
- adapting to Carpentries workbench might make contribution more easily possible

### Risks
- Development becomes more administrative
- Structure becomes more fixed
- Difficult in carpentries to get qualified teachers
- Innovation in teaching and delivery slowed down
- Slower development since can't be drastically changed while others are relying on them

## What do we want to ask/discuss with Toby/Carpentries lesson people

- Can lessons be grouped? Can CR become a lesson program, parallel to Software/Data/Library carpentry? What would that mean?

- how does versioning work and lesson maturity work if we want to make changes? does a committee then decide whether something is merged to avoid downstream surprises/breakage?
- How can Carpentries instructor training adapt to the latest CR teaching practices?
- what does "beta"/"stable" lesson in incubator mean in practice? also w.r.t. to changes?
- How can CR share experiences from teaching workshops?
- How do install instructions work?

- are tabs possible? (for language examples or domain specific examples)
- possible to add other extra features?
- can one highlight certain lines in the code input or output box?

## What can we give?

- if we go for the incubator or lesson program, then we can contribute lesson content which we already have
- we have ownership over the lessons. meaning: the lessons typically come with somebody who cares about them and can follow up and react to PRs. they are not just source code without owner.
- help out at an intermediate level workshop