Hi all,
In past years, I have been teaching parts of the SWC material in computer
labs of University 3rd year biology/genetics undergrad courses, mixing it
into a genomics data analysis course. This was not initiated by the
University but rather myself. Some at the University certainly value that I
organize and run SWC workshops but they are yet to move towards a required
more quantitative curriculum for all "science" students.
First the obvious. The class sizes I taught have been small (up to 20
students) so it went "ok". Our University policy is to only allow for a lab
TA if the class is >25-30. So, I am sure everyone who taught SWC before is
aware, its a bit of a pain to do it alone, even for only 20 students. Its
slow going with lots of breaks due to mostly people not able to type the
correct things. A half a day workshop can easily stretch over several labs.
In subsequent years, I have been volunteering my PhD and MSc students to
help out, which worked fine. However, they only helped out 2-3 times during
the course of the semester and they would probably stage a revolution if
they were asked to do it over the whole year.
Another issue that might come up is that, you cannot expect that every
student will have their own laptop. I have been using University computer
labs, but their setup generally does not allow for rearranging tables in a
manner I would do in a SWC workshop to allow for more efficient "pair/group
programming". You could make the students change seats after you get feel
for who has what kind of skills... but students hate it... I want to sit
with my buddy... on the positive side, using computers in a lab, you can
pre-configure them so you know everything works like it should (most of the
times). I have been using a virtual linux image so I also introduce them to
that before going into any of the workshop materials.
With regards to motivation for instructors, I believe that would not be a
problem if you would move to a regular course. The hours I teach count
towards the total I have to fulfill. I happily teach things I like teaching
and believe in. I would only teach programming, git, and related skills all
year long if I could. I can imagine many SW/DC instructors think like this.
Student motivation is definitely a problem. As said, they are
biology/genetic/molbio students so not everyone is fantastically keen to
work on a computer. But after a while most learn and see the benefits of
adding these skills, especially as they help them analyzing their own
"genomics" data sets. So I think mixing the content into some more student
domain-specific material works quite nicely.
Cheers,
Seb
O---o
O-o Sebastian Schmeier
O Research Group Leader
o-O Senior Lecturer in Bioinformatics/Genomics
o---O Institute of Natural and Mathematical Sciences
O---o Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
O-o [email protected] ~ [email protected]
O +64 9 4140800 ext 43538 ~ +64 9 213 6538
o-O https://sschmeier.com
o---O
On Wed, Oct 3, 2018 at 8:57 PM Lex Nederbragt <[email protected]>
wrote:
> Hi community,
>
> At the University of Oslo (UiO), we have an ongoing process that will
> result in a Masterplan for IT at the university. I am part of the task
> force responsible for writing this plan, and have been tasked to contribute
> to a section on skills training. We have a large Carpentries effort at UiO,
> regularly teaching one-day workshops with one lesson of the Software
> Carpentry stack each (including make and testing/continuous integration),
> very popular two-day R (tidyverse), and occasionally Data or Library
> Carpentry lessons or full two-day workshops. Many at UiO are now seeing the
> need to offer this kind of skills training more widely and organized as
> formal course offerings, potentially with students earning credit.
>
> I am very happy with this development as it is a recognition of the skill
> gap that exists amongst researchers, and a testament to the success of The
> Carpentries and our local effort in filling it. However, I also worry that
> we may lose something in the process of scaling up offering these workshops.
>
> By making Carpentry workshops a core offering across departments, with
> students able to earn credit from them, my fear is that the spirit of the
> volunteer effort gets lost or may become reduced. Making our workshops into
> required courses may change (reduce) the motivation for learners and
> instructors.
>
> So here are my questions to you:
>
> ⁃ Have other universities made the same move, or are they planning
> this, and if so, how are they organizing this effort?
> ⁃ How to keep learners motivated if they feel they are required to
> take a Carpentries workshops?
> ⁃ How to keep the quality of instruction, and instructor motivation,
> high, if workshops become organized like regular courses?
>
> I’d appreciate any suggestions that will help us become succesful scaling
> up our Carpentries skills training!
>
> Regards,
>
> Lex Nederbragt
>
>
> ------------------------------------------
> The Carpentries: discuss
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