Hi,
I have always gone with the rule of thumb of number of attendees
divided by 5 for the number of helpers required which I believe came
from the carpentry documentation somewhere. I would not assume that
instructors are going to play the part of helpers. I have often seen
instructors do other things while another session is taking place, as
in they have done their bit or are about to. If you want your
instructors to be helpers make sure they have agreed to act the part
before hand.
Mario
On Wed, 25 Apr 2018, Aleksandra Nenadic wrote:
Hi,
I agree with Bianca here, class sizes of 20 (2 instructors + 2 helpers) work
nicely, and I also would
not go above 30 (with more helpers in this case 3-4). This is perhaps only
marginally relevant, but I
have been struggling to book rooms (at Uni of Manchester, UK) that can comfortably
fit 30 (let alone >
30) people with enough room for helpers to move around and reach and talk to
trainees without
disturbing the rest of the class and for trainees to see the screen at the
front properly (but this may
be a limitation of rooms we have at our disposal here).
Anything below 20 is possibly not such a good use of resources (instructors'
and helpers' times), even
though I did workshops for ~15 people from the same cohort in a nice and
friendly environment.
Regards,
Aleks
--
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Dr Aleksandra Nenadic, Training Lead
The Software Sustainability Institute
The University of Manchester
Email: a.nena...@manchester.ac.uk
Email: a.nena...@software.ac.uk
Skype: a.nenadic
Office: +44 (0)161 275 0672
Web: www.software.ac.uk
Twitter: @SoftwareSaved
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
On 24/04/2018 16:41, Bianca Peterson wrote:
Hi Maneesha,
From past workshop experience (n=5), a class size of 20 has worked the best (in
my opinion). For
this class size, 2 instructors and 2 helpers were enough, since the one
instructor usually helps
while the other one teaches. However, it's important to keep in mind that one
of the helpers
might need to run/drive around to handle crises.
Then again, on request, I did a one-day R workshop all by myself (I forgot to
ask for helpers)
with 15 participants, and I was able to manage it. However, there weren't a lot
of questions and
most of them just wanted to "have a look at R" and were not necessarily
interested in using this
post-workshop.
Personally, I would not run a workshop with more than 30 people, because, as
you said, the
workshops should be engaging and interactive.
Hope this helps!
Bianca Peterson
North-West University
Potchefstroom
2531
On Tue, Apr 24, 2018 at 5:22 PM, Maneesha Sane <manee...@carpentries.org> wrote:
Hey all -
As I think about Carpentries workshop operations, I have a question for discussion.
What's your ideal Carpentries class size?
Assume 2 instructors and a 1:10 helper:learner ratio (3 people total for a
class of 10, 4
people total for a class of 20, and so on)
We want our workshops to be engaging, hands on, and interactive. Is there a
lower limit to
this, where it doesn't seem big enough to worthwhile in those ways?
And is there an upper limit, where it's too big to be worthwhile in those ways?
Perspectives from instructors, hosts, helpers, and learners are welcome! Feel
free to
reply all or email me directly. Thanks for your feedback.
(Cross posted on slack. Not part of that communications platform? Join
here: https://swc-slack-invite.herokuapp.com)
Maneesha Sane
Program Manager
Instructor and Trainer
Software Carpentry: https://software-carpentry.org/
Data Carpentry: http://www.datacarpentry.org/
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