Meeting - 22 April 2024

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.

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 and The Carpentries community calendar.

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

Meeting Minutes

  • Chair: Dimitrios Theodorakis
  • Timekeeper:
  • Notetaker: Phil Reed

Agenda

  1. Assign notetaker & timekeeper
  2. Sign in & ice-breaker
  3. Review of actions
  4. Announcements
  5. Collaboration opportunities/ideas
  6. Instructor Training checkout questions
  7. Wrap-up/AOB

Sign-in

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

  1. Phil Reed (he/him), University of Manchester
  2. Andrew Walker (he/him), University of Oxford
  3. Dimitrios Theodorakis (he/him), Met Office
  4. Juan Herrera (he/him), EPCC (The University of Edinburgh)
  5. Colin Sauze (he/him), National Oceanography Centre
  6. Evgenij Belikov (he/him), EPCC (The University Edinburgh)
  7. Gokmen Kilic (he/him), University of Durham (checkout)
  8. Lucia Michielin(she/her), University of Edinburgh (Centre for Data, Culture & Society) …

Notes

Icebreaker question: name an object in the room in front of you. We got Met Office stamps, a pencil with a bear on it, an Overleaf green duck, two DiRAC cleaning heads, a tin of PostgreSQL mints, almost empty Muji pen.

No actions last month.

Announcements

Collaboration opportunities/ideas

Collaboration Workshop 24: 30 Apr-2May
  • Next week, Andrew and Colin to attend. Mini workshop on green computing (Colin to lead).
RSECon 2024: 3-5 September 2024
  • Recent call for submissions, until 1 May. 'Interactive sessions' type includes hackathons this time. 'Birds of a feather' type may be good for training.
  • Last year had a day dedicated to training at the end of the conference. We don't know if this year has anything similar. Half a day was not long enough for a hackathon.
  • We don't know which UK Carpentries members may be attending.
  • Discussed sharing the new Workbench format and other ideas, other aspects of the Carpentries. Talked about CodeRefinery (who might be moving to the Carpentries format). Talked about internationalisation and translation efforts (see Oleksander and Giacomo work on translations to Ukranian and Italian respectively).
  • 150-minute format favourable, to get into more detail.

People who can help put together abstract with Dimitrios:

  • Colin
  • Juan

Action: Dimitrios to follow up on the RSECon 2024 submission idea.

Instructor Training checkout questions

  • Suggestions for the teaching demo for the instructor training checkout?
    • Stick to the official lesson, don't deviate from text.
    • Multiply the time suggested by at least 2. Plan a 45-minute to last 1.5 hours, particularly for remote teaching.
    • Breathe and go slowly, slower than you think you need. Give your learners time. Demos can go quickly due to nerves, or because you know the content.
    • Divide people to groups, people work through exercises together and that speeds up and encourages collaboration.
    • In the demo, if learners are meant to do something or answer a question, pause to pretend you are waiting.
    • Sticky notes work incredibly well. More people that would normally not talk to share they have a problem will do so.
    • If you can prepare some errors that you deliberately make, show how you diagnose them, can gain extra points.
    • Try to enjoy it, if you can!
    • Don't plan to remember everything by heart, have a cheat sheet nearby.
    • Showing the reality is that there will be errors, for everyone.
    • Always have water available, your throat will get dryer than you think.
    • Don't try to do the whole two days by yourself, make sure to share with someone, even if you know it.
    • In the demo, you only have a small bit. Explain briefly what would have come in the previous bit, for context.

Wrap-up/AOB

Has anyone heard about research council funding for short training courses for grad students?

  • Not heard this year, budget may be redirected this year.

Colin: Time for training including instructor exchanges from other organisations, does anyone do this? (If travel cost paid but not time) Then may offer exchange.

  • None of us do that now (nationally), might have interest.
  • Some local ones might, informally.
  • White Rose (Sheffield, York, Leeds) Libraries might, sort of.
  • Could be possible but need to check.
  • Various complications, avoiding linking to a single partner institution.
  • Transatlantic Data Academy partnership has reciprocal training US/UK.
  • Dariah - https://campus.dariah.eu/

Actions

Dimitrios to follow up on the RSECon 2024 submission idea.

TBC Next meeting 20 May… to avoid Bank Holiday! Phil to check with Aleks.

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