Thanks so much for this discussion. Others please chime in to share
your experiences.
It seems like while the case Raniere described (thinking SWC is an
actual software package) may be unusual there are other instances where
hosts, learners, or others are unclear about what we do.
Since I'm the one who connects instructors and hosts, if there is
anything I can do to better manage that communication when I make those
connections, please let me know. It's important to me that expectations
between instructors, hosts, and learners are clearly communicated.
Best,
Maneesha Sane
Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry
Program Coordinator
https://software-carpentry.org/
http://www.datacarpentry.org/
On 04/12/2016 02:13 PM, Moreau, John (UMKC-Student) wrote:
+1 to Neil’s point
tl;dr – Sometimes, host organizers misrepresent the content of a
workshop. Intentional or not, this miscommunication puts the
instructors in an awkward situation.
At one recent workshop, the host had advertised the workshop as an R
workshop to participants. However, the host had requested a Software
Carpentry workshop that included R as well as git, Bash, /and SQL/. We
had a few participants who voiced their displeasure at covering
anything other than R. One particular participant confronted me during
a break about SQL. This learner already knew SQL and /assumed everyone
else did as well/.
When it became obvious that the individual would not be satisfied, I
politely reminded them that we were covering the material requested by
the host and that any further questions might be best addressed to the
host.
I do not believe this learner ever did talk to the host.
*From:*Discuss [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.software-carpentry.org]
*On Behalf Of *Neil Chue Hong (SSI)
*Sent:* Tuesday, April 12, 2016 1:07 PM
*To:* Davide Del Vento <davide.del.ve...@gmail.com>; Maneesha Sane
<manee...@software-carpentry.org>
*Cc:* Software Carpentry Discussion <discuss@lists.software-carpentry.org>
*Subject:* Re: [Discuss] Outreach misconception about Data and
Software Carpentry as piece of software instead of skills
I've seen some similar misconceptions, in all cases because someone
not directly from the "carpentry community" has tried to explain
SWC/DC to someone else (which I've then overheard).
These included:
- Software Carpentry is very expensive, costing thousands of dollars
- Software Carpentry only teaches in Python
- Software Carpentry is trying to turn everyone into software engineers
- Software Carpentry is only for developers (I guess this is a matter
of interpretation)
- Software Carpentry hasn't been updated recently (this was in
relation to the person thinking it was online lessons only)
So nothing particularly problematic, but perhaps we should think about
ensuring our mission and vision are broadcast as clearly as possible.
Cheers
Neil
On Tue, 12 Apr 2016 at 18:41, Davide Del Vento
<davide.del.ve...@gmail.com <mailto:davide.del.ve...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I've seen many people confused about what the differences between
SWC and DC are, specifically, people doing any kind of data
analysis thinking that they should go into DC, even folks who were
already very skilled and needed instead a SWC python-advanced
class (if we had it). I've seen people who *really* didn't care
about spreadsheets and SQL (but cared about data analysis) going
into DC and get frustrated. I've seen people who went to SWC
(python-beginner) but really needed a pyton-intermediate.
I'm not sure how carefully they read the descriptions, if they
were native speakers or not, and what the source of the confusion
was. It might simply be that they did not read anything and they
assumed "software" carpentry = something for "software
engineers", while "data carpentry" = something for "scientists who
deal with data". I could be the one to blame, since I was the
organizer, however I tried to be very un-specific and use the
official material, see the last instances that I ran:
https://sea.ucar.edu/event/software-carpentry-2
https://sea.ucar.edu/event/data-carpentry
or https://sea.ucar.edu/event/software-carpentry-1 for a less
recent one.
Feel free to ask more specific questions (maybe offlist) and hope
this helps improving :-)
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 11:02 AM, Maneesha Sane
<manee...@software-carpentry.org
<mailto:manee...@software-carpentry.org>> wrote:
I'm usually the first point of contact for general public
inquiries about SWC & DC and don't think I've seen anything
like this. If this is just one person I don't want to put too
much effort into fixing things - we will always have a random
person here or there that is confused. I think we're pretty
clear that our lessons include R, Python, Shell, Git, etc. If
anyone else has seen a pattern of misconceptions about what
SWC or DC is please let us know so we can think about how we
may need to adjust our message.
Maneesha Sane
Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry
Program Coordinator
https://software-carpentry.org/
http://www.datacarpentry.org/
On 04/12/2016 08:54 AM, Raniere Silva wrote:
Hi,
this week I was negotianting a workshop and the person
that I was
talking to really believe that Data and Software Carpentry
are two
softwares and the workshops are about the softwares itself.
That person probably spent a lot of time looking at Data
and Software
Carpentry website (based the email that I received) so I
want to know
if you already experience an similar situation because if
this is a
common misconception we need to improve our website.
Cheers,
Raniere
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