---
# System prepended metadata

title: 'CarpentryCon 2022: Online teaching strategies from CodeRefinery'
tags: [Carpentries]

---

---
tags: Carpentries
---

# CarpentryCon 2022: Online teaching strategies from CodeRefinery

## Proposal

E-postadresse

lease select the type of session you are proposing. Additional information on session types can be found on the CarpentryCon website: https://2022.carpentrycon.org/
**Breakout discussion 1.5h**

Please provide a short title for your proposal, capturing what your intended audience can expect from attending this session.
**Livestreaming massive courses: a fresh look at online teaching and reaching a different type of audience**

Please provide 3-5 keywords relevant to your proposed session. 
**online teaching; livestream; coderefinery; co-teaching**

If participation in your session requires any prerequisites or prior knowledge, please list those here.
**general structure of Carpentries-style workshops**

Please provide a short abstract of no more than 250 words that includes a session overview, intended audience, and expected outcomes. (atm 132 words)
**In 2020, most courses and training projects transitioned from in-person to online teaching, but many tried to use in-person strategies online. CodeRefinery started this way, but soon scaled up and developed a very new model of online teaching: combining livestream, co-teaching, and parallelized and threaded questions and answers. This strategy has been applied to teaching events with up to 300 participants, and requires not only adjusted technology, but an adjusted mindset for the course purpose and outcome.  During this discussion session, we will share our strategy and lessons learnt and how they can benefit the Carpentries community. Participants who have undergone similar challenges are encouraged to also share their experience and how they solved it. At the end of the session, hopefully everyone will be more prepared to manage large courses online.**

Briefly describe why this session would be of interest to The Carpentries community.
**The Carpentries mission is to teach foundational coding and data science skills to researchers. Due to recent events, almost everyone had to shift from in-person to online teaching and adapt their methods. This discussion will allow people who faced this challenge to come together and share experiences and lessons learnt, strengthening their skills for remote teaching.**


Please provide the name of the session lead.

Email of session lead

Has the session lead been involved in The Carpentries community? Tell us how!

Please provide the name(s) of any co-leads or helpers for your session.

Emails of co-leads or helpers

Please select the time zone(s) in which you and your co-leads would be willing to lead your session. View map of UTC time zones: 

Would you and your co-leads (if applicable) be willing to lead your session more than once to accommodate participants in multiple time zones?

Do you and your co-leads commit to abiding by The Carpentries Code of Conduct as a CarpentryCon session lead and participant? You can review our Code of Conduct in our handbook: https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/policies/index_coc.html

The Accessibility Subcommittee is working hard to ensure CarpentryCon is as accessible as possible to all attendees. This includes having session leads and presenters design their presentations and present their information in an accessible way. Are you and your co-leads committed to doing your part to ensure your session is accessible? Recommendations and guidelines from the Subcommittee will be provided before conference registration opens.

Please provide any additional comments relevant to your proposed session.
- Link: https://coderefinery.github.io/manuals - documentation on our teaching
- Link: https://coderefinery.github.io/community-teaching: Workshop dedicated to this, summary and map of the manuals.
- Link: "the future of teaching"


## Presentation notes

We will cover "Introduction", "Teaching tools", and a bit of "Workshop organization".

To do:
* Rearrange material reflecting the order of points in this HackMD (RB)
* Update metadata on carpentry con site
  * Presenter names (please write your names the way you want them to appear on the website)
    * Richard Darst, Aalto University / CodeRefinery
    * Radovan Bast, UiT The Arctic University of Norway/ CodeRefinery
    * Luca Ferranti, University of Vaasa
    * Samantha Wittke, CSC
  * HackMD link, "how to attend livestream" link, material link.
* Create and prepare HackMD with a nice URL
  * https://hackmd.io/@coderefinery/carpentrycon-2022-attendee
  * official etherpad: https://pad.carpentries.org/cc2022-livestreaming-massive-courses 
* [ ] Zoom screenshare that points people to livestream
* Connect somehow to Tue 6PM session: [Breakout Session: Online to In-Person: How do we translate what we have learned from teaching online?](https://calendar.google.com/calendar/event?eid=NXA0aG1iYjFtZWw3Y2wyOGJwMzduZXFoMGcgY190bXRya2YzMjhnanRjczF1MDVtaGZibjdxY0Bn&ctz=Europe/Helsinki) ? 
* Think up some polls or questions to ask.
  * do people prefer online or in person? what are main reasons/pros/cons 
* [ ] add to codeferinery manual 3 "take-home" bullet points to the top of each page
* [ ] for screen sharing during live demo, we share hackmd. we only show manual if we have to (example: two screenshare examples)
* [ ] tweet about the session and invite people to follow livestream
* [x] connect to the CarpentryCon 2020 session: https://coderefinery.org/about/reports/#presentations

### Schedule (who does what)?

Assign a name to each of these sections, and that person is the leader.


* Introduction (12 min)
  * **Welcome and introduction** (6 min) (LF)
    * First off, please remember we have a code of conduct: https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/policies/code-of-conduct.html
      * In this session, we hold ourselves to this
      * As you will learn later, the livestream is designed so that there can't be major CoC issues in the stream, other than HackMD that we will notice immediately.
    * Who we are (very brief, say name only)
    * RB Question: how/where to ask questions?
      * You may ask questions at *any time* inline in the HackMD. Inline, right where we are, so we see immediately.
    * Poll: can you see and edit the hackmd
      * remind to not use names, remind view/edit mode
  * **About the CodeRefinery project** (2 min) (RB)
    * Teaches intermediate-level software development tool lessons
    * Training network for other lessons, too (cross-borders)
    * Publicly-funded discrete projects (3 projects actually) transitioning towards an open community project
    * We want more people to work with us, and to work with more people
  * **About CodeRefinery workshops** (2 min) (RB)
    * We have online material, teaching, and exercise sessions
    * https://coderefinery.org/lessons/
    * **LF Question**: how does it relate/differ to Carpentries?
      * Compared to Carpentries, more independent exercise time, and less focused on type-along
      * Other differences: own installation expected, onboarding sessions, more intermediate attendees (attendees who already code), good progression from novice workshops
  * **Since our presentation in 2020** (2 min) (RD)
    * "How to scale up to reach hundreds of learners"
    * Better privacy
    * What we presented there has become more smooth and routine now 
    * More structured onboarding sessions and material
    * Teaching together
    * What we do now allows us to reach even more, with less effort

(here remind how/where to interact since some have connected later and have missed the start)

* **Livestreaming opportunities and challenges (15 min)**
  * **Teaching online** (3 min) (SW)
    * online as an opportunity for more community engagement in multinational project, workshop team from all over Nordics -> no need to travel for instructors and learners
    * breaking limitations of classroom: number of participants, screenshare/helping, watch only topics you are interested in, asynchronous Q&A only (whole team can answer, instructor can pick up question when fitting), ...
    * -> Teaching online allowed us to reach many audiences that we couldn't before, and provide more ways of attending 
    * **Question RD**: HackMD Poll: Who wants to keep teaching online?
    * Let's look at the results later, now Richard with a few words about how we get the course to the participants:
  * **Livestreaming** (3 min) (RD)
    * Zoom has problems with open courses, but livestreaming platforms allow huge audience and provide good moderation tools to build on.  Though we don't use those moderation tools.
    * Livestreaming is a huge culture shift.  Think more like watching a live TV program than a lecture.
    * There are some downsides, but the points we are about to cover more than compensate for us.
    * **RB Question:** Pros and cons of Twitch vs other platforms.
  * **Team teaching** (3 min) (LF)
    * Team teaching provides an interactive feel even when few learners ask questions
    * Less stressful for the teacher, if you forget or miss something, someone is backing you up
    * risk: can be more confusing if not properly implemented
    * **RB quesiton**: How do you prepare for team teaching?
      * You need some advance discussion about who does what, but overall you can usually end up preparing less if done correctly.  Check the link for more hints.
    * **LF**: "not only do teachers teach together in teams, but also students learn together in teams, Samantha do you want to comment on that?"
  * **Learner teams** (3 min) - (SW)
    * Long-term discussion group with peers during exercises.
    * Pre-made or single learners put in teams. We give each team an exercise leader if it doesn't have one.
    * Pre-made teams: people who knew each other before hand provide excellent interaction and skill retention. 
    * Expecting a community feeling in a lecture of 10 or more doesn't work well.  Use teams instead of expecting interactive lecture.
    * **LF question**: how to make sure everyone is included if some are more extrovert and some are shier?
      * We have an advance "team leaner training" session.  Long-term teams means that most people open up after a day or two.
      * expert helpers
      * welcoming atmosphere, hackmd
      * majority of teams work well
    * And now Radovan takes you through the organizer perspective of this distributed workshop organization
  * **Distributed workshop organization - organizer perspective** (3 min) - (RB)
    * If another university/organization wants to run the course, they can easily join our existing course at little cost/risk to them and to us
    * Each organization that joins provide a great benefit to us (helpers, instructors)
    * They can reserve an in-person breakout room and provide mentors while watching the livestream.  A great experience for their audience.
    * **RD question**: I know you have had some brutal weeks as registration coordinator.  Can it get better in the future?
    * **RB**: well-defined roles can ease this

* **Roles and tools (20 min)**
  * **Workshop roles** (5 min) (SW)
    * In order to manage 100 people, we need well-defined roles.
    * Split **instructor coordinator** and **registration coordinator**
    * **Instructor** can focus on teaching; can take other roles when not teaching
    * Other specialized roles: 
        * **HackMD manager**: editing, referring to repetitive questions, move and format text, number questions
        * **Broadcaster**: livestream tech, 
        * **Director**: flow of the course: preparing and cueing instructors, switching the livestream scenes, announcing schedule, adjusting schedule as needed, 
        * **Host**: manager of learners during the course, organizational issues,  
        * **Expert helper**: all-around generalist who assists wherever is needed,
        * **Exercise leader**: keep teams on track, help with questions,
        * ...
    * This is a radically different approach from "teacher does everything"
    * Onboarding takes time but people learn by example.
    * **RB Question**: minimum amount of people needed?
        * minimum 2, one EL per 5-10 learners
    * transition: we need well-defined roles. what else do we need for a successful livestream workshop?
  * **Instructor tech setup** (5 min) (RB)
    * https://coderefinery.github.io/community-teaching/instructor-tech-setup/
    * Screenshare: portrait layout
    * Readability and beauty
    * Prompt
    * Sharing history
    * **LF question:** Should instructors be forced to have a consistent screenshare?
    * transition: we have mentioned hackmd a couple of times, this is what we use and see here, why do we use it?
  * **HackMD** (5 min) (LF)
    * Pausing and waiting for people to speak up isn't scalable or as inclusive as we hope
    * Asynchronous Q&A allows many more questions, including advanced questions which couldn't be answered otherwise
    * Problem of information overload. Learners must be prepared, but adapt quickly.
    * **RD question:** Pros and cons w.r.t. etherpad or google docs?
  * **Video recording** (2 min) (RB)
    * We don't expect many people to watch the recording from scratch later (but some do) (some might look afterwards a few pieces, like. reading a book vs looking something up from a book)
    * Learners get an "instant replay" to review, or to make up for a lost day, which is great.
    * Recording only works if privacy is guaranteed and effort is low.  This is only possible with the instructor-audience split setup of livestreaming.
    * **RB Question to RD**: how much time do you spend producing the videos?
  * **Video editing** (3 min) (RD)
    * Video editing can take a long time, and makes it hard to release them quick enough
    * Privacy: since it is guarenteed, you can be "good enough" instead of perfect.
    * ffmpeg-editlist helps: https://github.com/coderefinery/ffmpeg-editlist
    * **RB question:** What can we do to make video editing easier / avoid re-watching everything?
      * Good presentation skills help (good screenshare, point to what you are discussing). Actually editing is a good way to improve your teaching.

* How you can get involved (5 min)
  * **Possibilities for Carpentries** (3 min) (LF)
    * Carpentries is currently designed around small workshops, so many of these ideas can't directly apply
      * Yet many of these tools and also team teaching can still be used
    * You can run your own breakout room for any of our workshops
    * Join as observer if you want to see this in action
    * **HackMD discussion**: How can CodeRefinery become closer to Carpentries?
  * **CodeRefinery's plans** (2 min) (RB)
    * We are continuing to focus on online-first with local breakout rooms
    * We welcome people joining us, either individually or as an organization
    * Still interested in collaboration with Carpentries
    * We need to become better at marketing and outreach

* Audience discussion (45 min minus overflow time)
  * **Livestream Q&A** (15-30 min) (RD)
    * We will demonstrate how HackMD Q&A is more inclusive than zoom Q&A
    * "OK, we are running out of questions here, so let's go to the zoom (LINK) and we will continue"
    * Upvote questions with +1
  * **Zoom Q&A** (15-30 minutes) (RD)
    * Source for questions: https://hackmd.io/@coderefinery/community-teaching-2022-summer 