# Meeting - 28 November 2022

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## 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](https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/policies/code-of-conduct.html).

**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](https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/local-uk) and [The Carpentries community calendar](https://carpentries.org/community/#community-events).**

- [Community's HackMD workspace](https://hackmd.io/team/local-uk?nav=overview)
- [Previous meetings](https://hackmd.io/V3ReKkEESzqyCNxWJdulOw#Meeting-Notes)
- [Chairing rota](https://hackmd.io/@local-uk/rkPK1Si7F)
- [Guest speaker sign-up](https://hackmd.io/@local-uk/rkkzBTLOd)

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

## Meeting Minutes

- **Chair:** Phil Reed
- **Timekeeper:** Aleks Nenadic
- **Notetaker:** Aleks Nenadic

**Notetaker:**

### Agenda
0. Assign notetaker & timekeeper
1. Sign in & ice-breaker (favourite biscuit)
1. Review of actions
2. Announcements
- [SSI's Collaborations Workshop 2023](https://software.ac.uk/cw23), Tuesday 2 May - Thursday 4 May 2023, in person and online (hybrid), Manchester. The theme of CW23 is Sustainable Career Development for those in the research software community: looking after your software, your career, and yourself.
4. Guest speaker + Q&A:
- **Patrick Austin**, STFC, Experience of teaching large scale, hybrid format “Intermediate Research Software Development in Python”
- https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HHzKFwoB8qHekSavoRNJWSZ-MYu3ZAN0/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108599064857842063385&rtpof=true&sd=true
5. Instructor Training checkout questions
6. Wrap-up/AOB

### Sign-in

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

1. Mario Antonioletti; he/him; EPCC/SSI/University of Edinburgh, favourite biscuit: jaffa cake (only because I could not think fast enough)
2. Jannetta Steyn/ she,her / Newcastle University, favourite biscuit: ginger biscuit
3. Andrew Walker (he/him) / University of Oxford, favourite biscuit: garibaldi biscuit
4. Christopher Fullerton (he/him)/ University of Manchester (checkout), favourite biscuit: dark choc hobnob
5. Jeremy Cohen (he/him) / Imperial College London, favourite biscuit: milk choc digestive
6. Patrick Austin (he/him), STFC, favourite biscuit: hob nob of any variety
7. Phil Reed (he/him) / University of Manchester, favourite biscuit: bourbon
8. Sarah Jaffa (she) / University College London, favourite biscuit: chocolate malted milk
9. Olexandr Konovalov (he/him) / University of St Andrews, favourite biscuit: rich tea and oreos
10. Colin Sauze (he/him) / Aberystwyth University+Supercomputing Wales, favourite biscuit: chocolate covered oreos
11. Aleks Nenadic (she/her), SSI, University of Manchester, favourite biscuit: all biscuits but a 'plazma' biscuit from Serbia (a stolen Italian recipe!).
13. Juan Herrera (he/him), EPCC (The University of Edinburgh). favourite biscuit: oreos
14. Jonathan Stoneman (he/him), Freelance Trainer, mainly of journalists. favourite biscuit: dark chocholate digestive (and hob nobs)
15. Toby Hodges (he/him), The Carpentries, favourite biscuit: Cadbury's animal bisuits (https://www.cadbury.co.uk/products/cadbury-animals-18992)
16. Fran Baseby (she/her), Heritage Collections, University of Edinburgh, favourite biscuit: fox's classic
17. Stavrina Dimisthenous (she/her), Royce Institute, University of Manchester, favourite biscuit: poppy bisuits
18. Winfred Gatua (she/her), PhD student, Uni of Bristol, favourite biscuit: digestive sugar free biscuit

### Notes

#### Guest talk
Patrick Austin, STFC, Experience of teaching large scale, hybrid format “Intermediate Research Software Development in Python”

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HHzKFwoB8qHekSavoRNJWSZ-MYu3ZAN0/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108599064857842063385&rtpof=true&sd=true

- STFC is one of the 9 research councils, supporting researchers in physics, astronomy, and delivering courses to PhD students, aprentices and placement students
- In the end, attendess were mainly staff requiring computing for their jobs, also attracted more experienced staff who mainly knew things covered in the course
- 20 in person in 2 rooms and 2 helpers in each room, 21 online attendees in 3 breakout rooms with 1 helper each
- 6 people instructing, 12 people helping in total
- Over 5 weeks, courses included intro to git, shell, Python and Intermeidate reserch software skills course
- Intermediate reserch software skills course
- Used VS Code instead of PyCharm because instructors used it
- Section 3 took a bit longer, so continued it in the slot for Section 4 and then had to catch up and rebalance it
- A range of experience in audience
- Used the instructor-led format instead of self-learning format, like any other Carpentry workshop - it helped learners who only recently completed the introductory course
- 57 people interested, about 25% did not turn up, not good for planning helpers
- post-it notes used in person to gauge progress, ticks/crosses over zoom but none of the participants used this mechanism so it was hard to measure progress
- because of the hybrid nature of the workshop - sometimes it was hard to provide help (e.g. Python installation problems) - for online attendees breakoutrooms were used to provide one-to-one help which was effective but they miss the commands covered by instructor in the main session - big demand for commands being copy/pasted for catching up
- admin help needed to go in and out of breakout rooms, manually assigning people, not keeping to pre-assdigned rooms, some people attening online one day and in person the other so loads of facilitation needed
- Participants did not report issues with hybrid format but it was a cause of lots of problems; they appreciated exercises and helpers.
- Areas to improve: catching up with exercises, going slower
- For the future: smaller, more frequent workshops, remove hybrid format (either just in person or just online workshops), circulate materials and do self-study mode (might suit some learers more but can dilute the brand with woo much choices, people might not bother with exercises)

#### Shell tool for sharing commands
Seeing all the commands (and output) from the instructors screen.
https://tmate.io/
and https://github.com/vitorbaptista/shellshare

#### Lesson Translation

Olexandr Konovalov: translation of the first Carpentry lesson into Ukranian: https://explore.transifex.com/carpentries-i18n/python-novice-gapminder/

The Carpentries already did a similar project for the Spanish language, and set up an
infrastructure for other languages. It is amazing how it works using modern tools -
the lesson is broken into strings, their translation is tracked, and any changes
in the original source will be tracked too.

To start with, we have already translated 100% of the Python lesson, and are now
proofreading it. It should be available in a rendered HTML form soon.

If you know anyone interested, I will appreciate if you could forward them this
information or suggest to get an account in transifex and request joining the team
at https://www.transifex.com/carpentries-i18n/public/

Even a little amount of time that someone can dedicate to this project will be helpful.
With transifex, it seems really easy to split work on small individual portions.

A translator may be someone who knows Ukrainian and the lesson content. We plan
also to translate lessons on UNIX shell, version control with Git, and computational
algebra system GAP, but would also consider other lessons, which can be found at
- https://software-carpentry.org/lessons/
- https://datacarpentry.org/lessons/
- https://librarycarpentry.org/lessons/

so experts in other areas could suggest their translation too.

Further two useful texts for new volunteers are:
- https://carpentries-i18n-handbook.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guide/translator/01_format.html
- https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2022-05-26-top-tips-translating-open-education-resources

From my experience, I've skimmed these two pages first, and after translating a dozen lines
I've re-read them again - then technical details there started to make much more sense. Some
of them may require familiarity with particular lesson format used by the Carpentries - a
beginner may ignore them for the first reading, and I will be happy to explain them at
some point at some information session for new volunteers which I will be organising.