[Discuss] New website for The Carpentries

Hi everyone We are excited to announce that The Carpentries website is now live! The new website celebrates our merged identity as The Carpentries. The new website will give you access to all things 'Carpentries', in other words, it will give you easy access to what

Re: [Discuss] Class size for workshops

I have run SWC workshops between 4 and 35 participants. For me, the sweet spot has been 20–25, and I consider 35 to be a hard limit. (The workshops with 35 had two instructors or more, and at least two helpers.) Neal Davis On 24 April 2018 at 10:41, Bianca Peterson

Re: [Discuss] Class size for workshops

Hi, Thanks, Mario and everyone, for sharing your perspective on the student-to-helper ratio. I asked this question in this comment https://software-carpentry.org/blog/2017/07/helper.html a few months ago. In the meantime, I found "one helper for every 10 attendees" in

Re: [Discuss] Thoughts on a workshop: Pedagogies for Teaching Programming

Hi, Peer instruction would work in this setting for (2) and (3). you could use a non-language-specific programming multiple-choice question. I usually - show the question and answers - let them think for themselves - discuss with neighbour, see whether you agree and why (not) - each person

Re: [Discuss] Class size for workshops

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

Re: [Discuss] Class size for workshops

Hi all, my experience as organiser and instructor is that the room used for teaching is more important than the class size (given the same ratio of students and helpers). If you have a room where helpers can walk easily and that instructors need to not direct face the projector this will

Re: [Discuss] Class size for workshops

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