Hi all, My involvement with the Carpentries has been limited to a single workshop so far, but I've participated or helped organize a dozen or so similar short workshops since I was grad student, while also teaching long-form classes on computational/quantitative skills in paleontology.
My overall sense is that the two are complementary. Courses that last more than three days actually have a time-frame that allows for evaluation of skill, feedback on that evaluation and thus skill improvement, while the short workshops allow for the rapid-absorption of initial skills. While I think both have their benefits, I think, workshops like the Carpentries are most useful to those who don't know anything really, or think they don't anything about the subject at hand. To use the mental mapping of concepts, I think the workshops help build that initial mental map, which then serves as a foundation for long-term modules like courses to build further in that direction. I've also seen that, often, multiple short workshops on similar subject matter, but taught by different instructors, are necessary to ensure that a student has the right initial toolset to move forward. And, I think at least in some areas of computational science, this has been a pretty standard model for years: younger graduate students (who in my field have never opened a terminal before) are encouraged to take workshops to fill in basic computational skills, and then take longer-form workshops that build not only necessary specialized analytical skills for their discipline, but also teach a lot of detailed conceptual and methodological details that are ideally covered by lectures, or discussion groups, or projects. So, I definitely think institutions should prioritize both, and that its absolutely helpful if a myriad assortment of academic units want to support the offering of short workshops. But I don't think that one can simply be scaled up to the other - there is a murky, but discrete gap in the gradient. I think a lot of what I've come to value from the Carpentries model could get lost otherwise. I don't think the intense nature of 1-2 day workshops is sustainable, nor should it be, but I also think that intensity is essential to developing the needed basic skills. Cheers, -Dave Bapst On Wed, Oct 3, 2018 at 2:56 AM 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 > -- David W. Bapst, PhD Asst Research Professor, Geology & Geophysics, Texas A & M University Postdoc, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Univ of Tenn Knoxville https://github.com/dwbapst/paleotree ------------------------------------------ The Carpentries: discuss Permalink: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tad9e416c2ec4742e-M7c543979d513a32bf16fe69e Delivery options: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/subscription
