Re: [Discuss] strong critique of paper cited in last week's blog post

[Carol Willing]

After 30+ years around software development, I can qualitatively say 
from my vantage point that there are differences in assumptions that 
individuals make when dealing with individuals of a different gender 
whether on GitHub, in-person, or other places. Fortunately, these 
differences in assumptions exist or we might be in an even more 
homogenous industry.


I commend Greg and the Software Carpentry team on releasing the gender 
statistics in a blog post and opening discussion on SWC. While the 
papers/position points will likely polarize, they’re not the most 
important issue here. A key point for SWC is that the people of SWC have 
the ability, skills, and motivation to deliver high quality training 
without exclusion (either explicit or implicit).


Keep up the great work!

Warmly,

Carol


On 22 Feb 2016, at 11:34, Greg Wilson wrote:


Hi,

People may find 
http://svpow.com/2016/02/20/that-paper-that-says-women-are-better-coders-than-men-but-are-judged-on-their-gender-it-doesnt-say-that-at-all/ 
interesting - it's a strong critique of the preprint cited in last 
week's blog post at 
http://software-carpentry.org/blog/2016/02/checking-the-balance.html.


Cheers,
Greg

--
Dr Greg Wilson
Director of Instructor Training
Software Carpentry Foundation


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Carol Willing
Research Software Engineer, Project Jupyter @ Cal Poly
Director, Python Software Foundation

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Re: [Discuss] strong critique of paper cited in last week's blog post

[Brandon Curtis]

That preprint got pummeled all over the Internets:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-excited-about-that-github-study/

* -- Brandon*


On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 11:34 AM, Greg Wilson <
gvwil...@software-carpentry.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> People may find
> http://svpow.com/2016/02/20/that-paper-that-says-women-are-better-coders-than-men-but-are-judged-on-their-gender-it-doesnt-say-that-at-all/
> interesting - it's a strong critique of the preprint cited in last week's
> blog post at
> http://software-carpentry.org/blog/2016/02/checking-the-balance.html.
>
> Cheers,
> Greg
>
> --
> Dr Greg Wilson
> Director of Instructor Training
> Software Carpentry Foundation
>
>
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> Discuss@lists.software-carpentry.org
>
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>
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[Discuss] strong critique of paper cited in last week's blog post

[Greg Wilson]

Hi,

People may find 
http://svpow.com/2016/02/20/that-paper-that-says-women-are-better-coders-than-men-but-are-judged-on-their-gender-it-doesnt-say-that-at-all/ 
interesting - it's a strong critique of the preprint cited in last 
week's blog post at 
http://software-carpentry.org/blog/2016/02/checking-the-balance.html.


Cheers,
Greg

--
Dr Greg Wilson
Director of Instructor Training
Software Carpentry Foundation


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Re: [Discuss] Need presentation materials for making the case for SWC

[Karin Lagesen]

You also have a SWC pitch that you can use here:

http://software-carpentry.org/workshops/pitch/

Karin

On 20/02/16 18:41, David Dotson wrote:

Perfect! Thanks!

David

On 02/20/2016 10:39 AM, Rémi E. wrote:

Hi David,

There is this:
https://github.com/swcarpentry/slideshows

but the numbers, at least, would probably need a refresh.

Rémi


On 20/02/2016 18:27, David Dotson wrote:

Hey all,

I'm giving a brief (10 minute) presentation next week at a ASU
Physics department faculty meeting to convince the department to
support annual an SWC workshop targeted to graduate students each
January. I don't think it will be a hard sell, since the chair was
already impressed by the feedback from our workshop this January
, but is there a
reasonably up-to-date set of materials I can draw from to make it an
easy decision for them?

The department has already made strides in improving the
computational education of their undergraduates with a new
Computational Methods in Physics

course, for which we've drawn heavily from the SWC playbook in
putting together. The annual SWC workshop should help to fill in the
gaps for incoming graduate students that didn't get to benefit from
such a course in their own undergrad program.

Thanks!

David


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Re: [Discuss] installation instructions

[Jonah Duckles]

An "Installation Lesson" and the right configuration for a workshop are two 
different concerns. A workshop could be comprised of Bash, Git & Python, or 
Bash, Mercurial and Matlab, or or or... So I really do like the approach we use 
now to leave configuration directives in the hands of the instructor of a 
specific workshop.

That being said, each lesson itself could have an `install.md` that the lessons 
references with instructions on how to get dependencies necessary for the 
lesson on a Mac, Windows or Linux. This solves the web-only learner issue that 
started the thread. It also scales gracefully.

As the number of contributed lessons grow, I worry that an uber installation 
guide for all-the-things is not on a track to solve a novice learner's 
problems. It becomes yet another place to change configuration directives and 
unless it is actively maintained by all the maintainers, it will fall out of 
step with the preferred config.

Greg, can you bring this to the Lesson Developers/Maintainers with a request to 
come up with a way forward for install instructions for web-based learners?

Regards,
---
Jonah Duckles
Software Carpentry, Executive Director
http://software-carpentry.org

From: Christina Koch 
Reply: Christina Koch 
Date: February 22, 2016 at 8:20:28 AM
To: Andrew Walker [EAR] 
CC: discuss@lists.software-carpentry.org 
Subject:  Re: [Discuss] installation instructions  

To add something completely different to the mix - Sarah Stevens and I are in 
the process of making "how to" installation videos for both windows/mac.  They 
could go on the main SWC lessons page, on individual lesson pages, or in a new 
"installation" lesson.  

Christina

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 11:58 AM, Andrew Walker [EAR]  
wrote:
Hi all,

I suspect the best way to do this would be to create 'special workshop'
from the template that includes all installation instructions and some
generic background information rather than information about a particular
workshop. Call it something like 'installation' in the swcarpentry
organisation and we would get a useful site
(swcarpentry.github.io/installation) and hopefully have something we can
keep in sync with the instructions we present to workshop participants.

There are a few important points that I think we should keep in mind:

* We should keep a set of installation instructions in the workshop
webpages (and thus in the template). Workshop organisers / lead
instructors need to taylor these both for content (avoid telling
participants at a R-based workshop to install python) and "level" (if you
know you have absolute beginners the python test scripts seem to be more
trouble than they are worth, but they seem to work well with more advanced
groups).

* Any central instructions need be kept in sync with the per-workshop
instructions. Fixes like the problem with nano last summer need to
propagate everywhere and we should avoid telling participants to do two
different things depending on where they look.

* It should be possible to arrange this with a bit of careful thought and
git-foo. It would need reasonable communication between the
workshop-template maintainer and whoever looks after the installation
instructions repository and a clear idea about the direction that patches
to installation instructions should travel (they could go from the
installation instructions repository to the workshop-template or the other
way; I suspect mixing directions would result in a mess).

Ultimately this discussion probably belongs in an issue in a repository
somewhere.

Best wishes,

Andrew

‹
Dr Andrew Walker
NERC Independent Research Fellow
School of Earth and Environment
University of Leeds




On 19/02/2016, 18:14, "Discuss on behalf of Cam Macdonell"
 wrote:

>May I suggest that an admin on the SWC github site create a repo named
>"install-docs" (or something better) that we can begin to work on?
>
>Cam
>
>Quoting Karin Lagesen :
>> I have for some time wanted a "Resources" section on our website, with
>>stuff
>> that our community can use. IMO, this section would include a SWC pitch,
>> logos, other advertising material, install instructions, debug install
>> stuff, and other mostly static things that we, the community, would need
>> rapid access to.
>>
>> Karin
>>
>>
>> On 18.02.2016 02:26, Bennet Fauber wrote:
>> >I think that separting the installation instructions is good idea.
>> >That might make them easier for people trying to use the published
>> >material but who are not attending a specific workshop.
>> >
>> >In the spirit of writing functions and calling them from larger
>> >scripts, wouldn't we want to write a function for each installation:
>> >bash, git, python, et al., and then refer to the ones pertinent to the
>> >workshop from the workshop 

Re: [Discuss] installation instructions

[Christina Koch]

To add something completely different to the mix - Sarah Stevens and I are
in the process of making "how to" installation videos for both
windows/mac.  They could go on the main SWC lessons page, on individual
lesson pages, or in a new "installation" lesson.

Christina

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 11:58 AM, Andrew Walker [EAR] 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I suspect the best way to do this would be to create 'special workshop'
> from the template that includes all installation instructions and some
> generic background information rather than information about a particular
> workshop. Call it something like 'installation' in the swcarpentry
> organisation and we would get a useful site
> (swcarpentry.github.io/installation) and hopefully have something we can
> keep in sync with the instructions we present to workshop participants.
>
> There are a few important points that I think we should keep in mind:
>
> * We should keep a set of installation instructions in the workshop
> webpages (and thus in the template). Workshop organisers / lead
> instructors need to taylor these both for content (avoid telling
> participants at a R-based workshop to install python) and "level" (if you
> know you have absolute beginners the python test scripts seem to be more
> trouble than they are worth, but they seem to work well with more advanced
> groups).
>
> * Any central instructions need be kept in sync with the per-workshop
> instructions. Fixes like the problem with nano last summer need to
> propagate everywhere and we should avoid telling participants to do two
> different things depending on where they look.
>
> * It should be possible to arrange this with a bit of careful thought and
> git-foo. It would need reasonable communication between the
> workshop-template maintainer and whoever looks after the installation
> instructions repository and a clear idea about the direction that patches
> to installation instructions should travel (they could go from the
> installation instructions repository to the workshop-template or the other
> way; I suspect mixing directions would result in a mess).
>
> Ultimately this discussion probably belongs in an issue in a repository
> somewhere.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Andrew
>
> ‹
> Dr Andrew Walker
> NERC Independent Research Fellow
> School of Earth and Environment
> University of Leeds
>
>
>
>
> On 19/02/2016, 18:14, "Discuss on behalf of Cam Macdonell"
>  macdonel...@macewan.ca> wrote:
>
> >May I suggest that an admin on the SWC github site create a repo named
> >"install-docs" (or something better) that we can begin to work on?
> >
> >Cam
> >
> >Quoting Karin Lagesen :
> >> I have for some time wanted a "Resources" section on our website, with
> >>stuff
> >> that our community can use. IMO, this section would include a SWC pitch,
> >> logos, other advertising material, install instructions, debug install
> >> stuff, and other mostly static things that we, the community, would need
> >> rapid access to.
> >>
> >> Karin
> >>
> >>
> >> On 18.02.2016 02:26, Bennet Fauber wrote:
> >> >I think that separting the installation instructions is good idea.
> >> >That might make them easier for people trying to use the published
> >> >material but who are not attending a specific workshop.
> >> >
> >> >In the spirit of writing functions and calling them from larger
> >> >scripts, wouldn't we want to write a function for each installation:
> >> >bash, git, python, et al., and then refer to the ones pertinent to the
> >> >workshop from the workshop site?  Then the same installation
> >> >instructions could be used for an Intro Python and an Intermediate
> >> >Python.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 7:15 PM, Moreau, John (UMKC-Student)
> >> > wrote:
> >> >>Matt et al:
> >> >>
> >> >>Perhaps this is the crux of the problem. We no longer have
> >>installation
> >> >>instructions outside of the workshop pages. More experienced
> >>instructors may
> >> >>know to check the workshop template on GitHub. However, for newer
> >> >>instructors, potential workshop hosts, and drive-by site visitors,
> >>there¹s
> >> >>no clear directions.
> >> >>
> >> >>Thinking about the problem from the perspective of a novice learner,
> >>their
> >> >>first instinct will be to check the website. After coming up short,
> >>some
> >> >>people will become frustrated and abandon the search. Here¹s where an
> >>expert
> >> >>might say ³Why didn¹t you just* google for {program needed}?² Because
> >>the
> >> >>novice learner lacks the mental models of an expert, they may not
> >>know what
> >> >>search terms to use. The Shell lessons suffer from this problem more
> >>than
> >> >>most:
> >> >>
> >> >>·Nowhere on the lesson landing page
> >> >>(http://swcarpentry.github.io/shell-novice/) do we mention the term
> >>³Bash²
> >> >>
> >> >>·The ³Introducing the Shell² 

Re: [Discuss] SWC material as a semester long course?

[Hetherington, James]

My course notes for a ten-week, thirty-hour course in “Research Software 
Engineering with Python” are online at 
http://development.rc.ucl.ac.uk/training/engineering and PDF at  
http://development.rc.ucl.ac.uk/training/engineering/notes.pdf

Makefile which builds these from Jupyter can be found at 
https://github.com/UCL/rsd-engineeringcourse/blob/master/Makefile

Content heavily borrows from SWC, and is CC-BY.

--

Dr James Hetherington
Head of Research Software Development
Research IT Services

And

Honorary Lecturer
Department of Computer Science

University College London

Tel: 07946868834
Site: http://bit.ly/ucl-rsd
Twitter: @uclrcsoftdev @jamespjh
Skype: ucgajhe

From: Discuss 
>
 on behalf of Daniel Chen >
Date: Tuesday, 16 February 2016 23:08
To: Greg Wilson 
>
Cc: 
"discuss@lists.software-carpentry.org"
 
>
Subject: Re: [Discuss] SWC material as a semester long course?

Adam I may or may not have mentioned this:

Greg told me a *long* time ago that Dan Ellis [1] from electrical engineering 
at CU is also involved with SWC.
I tried to set up a more formal workshop system with him in the past, but I'm 
not at CU anymore.

From the blog post about this topic [2], Jenny mentioned that teaching 
rmarkdown and reproducible documents is a great way to get people to do 
analysis and have it published on github/the web.
Makes the entire thing very motivating for students.

- Dan

[1] https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/
[2] http://software-carpentry.org/blog/2016/02/swc-as-a-university-course.html


On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 5:36 PM, Greg Wilson 
> wrote:
Hi Steve,

According to our FAQ (http://software-carpentry.org/faq/#trademark), you can 
call something a Software Carpentry workshop if:

- it covers our core topics (the Unix shell, version control with Git or 
Mercurial, and modular programming in Python, R, or MATLAB)
- at least one certified instructor is teaching
- it runs our standard pre- and post-workshop assessments and sends us the 
results
- it sends us summary statistics (at a minimum, the number of people who 
attended, though we're grateful for contact info as well)

It doesn't matter to us whether the material is taught in two condensed days, 
four half-days, or over several weeks, as long as it's covered.  We're also 
agnostic about whether the material is part of a larger/longer course, or 
whether or not participants get course credit from the host institution, though 
we always like to hear about experiments in those directions.

I hope this helps, and we'd be happy to answer other questions,
Cheers,
Greg


On 2016-02-15 11:11 AM, Van Tuyl, Steven wrote:
Thanks for sending these, Ethan. What is the general protocol for approval of 
this type of thing by SWC/DC? I suspect “approval” is not the right word, but 
were one to explode the 2 day workshop into component pieces of whatever 
flavor, can we still brand it as “carpentry”? I’ve been considering this at my 
institution and, being a new guy around here, don’t want to get into hot water 
with the SWC/DC side.

steve
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Steve Van Tuyl
Digital Repository Librarian
Oregon State University Libraries & Press
web | http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/staff/vantuyls
orcid | http://orcid.org/-0002-8752-272X
email | steve.vant...@oregonstate.edu
phone | 541.737.3492


From: Ethan White 
<et...@weecology.org>
Date: Monday, February 15, 2016 at 8:07 AM
To: Adam Obeng 
<a...@adamobeng.com>, 
"discuss@lists.software-carpentry.org"
 
>
Subject: Re: [Discuss] SWC material as a semester long course?

Hi Adam,

I have run semester long versions of SWC in Python 
(http://www.programmingforbiologists.org/programming/)
 and Data Carpentry in R (http://www.datacarpentry.org/semester-biology/). They 
were 16 week classes, but with fewer hours per class, so they add up to about 
the same number of contact hours. Hopefully those syllabi and resources will be 
of some use.

Regarding funding, both of these courses were included in the broader impacts 
type sections of grants, which made it possible to support some of this work.

Best,
Ethan

On 02/15/2016 09:39 AM, Adam Obeng wrote:
To revive the topic:

I'm teaching a summer class at Columbia (3 hours/2x per week/6 weeks), which is 
titled