Carpentry@UiO /TASK: March 2022, minutes course coordination meeting
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[](https://hackmd.io/SJu-pppqQbSU2LYPMLeo3g)

###### tags: `minutes` `Meeting`

:::info
- **Location:** Zoom
- **Date:** March 14, 2022 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
- **Agenda**
- **Participants:**
- Lex (Carpentry@UiO)
- Désirée (Carpentry@UiO)
- Mohamed (Carpentry@UiO)
- Annika (Carpentry@UiO, Library)
- Aino (Carpentry@UiO, Library)
- Matthew (Carpentry@UiO/Digital Scholarship Center)
- Anne (Carpentry@UiO/TASK)
- Jarle (TASK)

1. **Introduction**
Participants are from different organisations within UiO, all of which offer courses.

2. **What courses / organisations are there to coordinate?**
- USIT courses: historically mainly targeting social/medical sciences, entry level: https://www.usit.uio.no/english/about/organisation/rc/dcm/task/
- Carpentries formally all disciplines. Goal: core courses at least once each semester (python, git, R, shell): https://uio-carpentry.github.io/
- University Library organises courses for various tools, will be lined up for 2023
- HPC course week
- CodeRefinery missing in the round: more advanced coding stuff beyond carpentries/TASK level, online-only, always targeted towards Nordic audience, not UiO specifically.

3. **Synergies, plans and challenges**

- Carpentries fill a gap that shouldn’t be there with their more basic, general courses. There is also data carpentries which focuses on field-specific data analysis.
- TASK tries to alternate course languages between English/Norwegian (either-or each semester). Some ad-hoc courses, some courses focused on different content/data. People are after methods courses with rather specialised problems rather than general programming courses where you learn for loops.
- easiest for short-term planning: TASK publishes their courses asap, and Carpentries schedules accordingly. TASK have their plans ready in June-August.
- Carpentries has a focus on pedagogy with instructor training courses (training spots paid by Carpentries membership of the library), this training could be useful for others, too.

Challenges:
- Room booking – all parties lack a group teaching room available that can be booked far in advance. Establish a dedicated room via the DSC?
- Carpentries: all is voluntary work, no-one paid and thus a lot of flexibility needed. Difficult to plan long-term. Only library courses are taught by library staff as part of their work.
- Carpentries are short of people teaching shell/git/UNIX.
- Carpentries/code refinery are depending on funding:
- code refinery is sustained for only a few years. The library would be interested in closer links.
- Carpentry@UiO is supported by the library, but the membership may be changing in the future (i.e. fewer instructor training spots)

4. **Action points:**
- medium/long-term coordination: plan the fall (May/June) -> *Anne*
- Can we collect all courses on one webpage? -> *Matthew*
- Group teaching room for live-coding courses, via DSC? -> *Matthew*
- Pick up ties to Sabry and Anne, which are currently focusing on code refinery.

- **Contact:** Désirée (<[e-mail]>)
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