Re: [Discuss] Outreach misconception about Data and Software Carpentry as piece of software instead of skills

[Greg Wilson]

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone - I've opened an issue at 
https://github.com/swcarpentry/website/issues/339 for further 
discussion, so please redirect follow-ups there.  (And if you're bored, 
and want to write a little widget to copy an archived Mailman email 
thread over into comments on a GitHub issue for archiving, please give 
me a shout...)


Thanks,
Greg

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


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Re: [Discuss] Outreach misconception about Data and Software Carpentry as piece of software instead of skills

[Lex Nederbragt]

Hi,

Should http://software-carpentry.org/  have a 
bit of text above the pictures for people visiting the page for the very first 
time? http://www.datacarpentry.org/  has this.

Lex


> On 14 Apr 2016, at 03:56, Ivan Gonzalez  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I've seen people not knowing the difference between Software and Data 
> Carpentry and some hosts confused about the contents of the workshop, but 
> never about the nature of the workshop itself.
> 
> My advice is that instructors should create *as soon as possible* the 
> workshop website, which includes the schedule, and send it to the host 
> *before* they do any announcements.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Ivan
> 
> On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 2:17 PM, Karin Lagesen  > wrote:
> On 13/04/16 17:03, Jonah Duckles wrote:
> Raniere,
> 
> No, I have never experienced that misconception.
> 
> I have actually encountered the same kind of thing, that person for some 
> reason got the understanding that we were teaching them some sort of 
> statistics software.
> 
> Kairn
> 
> 
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Re: [Discuss] Outreach misconception about Data and Software Carpentry as piece of software instead of skills

[Karin Lagesen]

On 13/04/16 17:03, Jonah Duckles wrote:

Raniere,

No, I have never experienced that misconception.


I have actually encountered the same kind of thing, that person for some 
reason got the understanding that we were teaching them some sort of 
statistics software.


Kairn

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Re: [Discuss] Outreach misconception about Data and Software Carpentry as piece of software instead of skills

[Jonah Duckles]

Raniere,

No, I have never experienced that misconception.

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

From: Raniere Silva 
Reply: Raniere Silva 
Date: April 12, 2016 at 7:32:58 AM
To: Software Carpentry Discuss list , 
Jonah Duckles , Tracy Teal 
Subject:  Outreach misconception about Data and Software Carpentry as piece of 
software instead of skills  

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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Re: [Discuss] Outreach misconception about Data and Software Carpentry as piece of software instead of skills

[Darya Vanichkina]

Hi All, 

> 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.
 


Yes, I’ve had this happen as well: where a workshop is pitched as “python” - 
and we do some weird thing no one has ever heard of called git and bash… And 
while we (obviously) try to explain why these are important, how they fit into 
a research workflow and provide motivation for students to learn them, I feel 
that there would be better uptake if the fact that a “Python SWC” workshop 
wasn’t just about python or that python wasn’t really the focus per se was 
clearly articulated beforehand - by everyone, including the hosts…

Perhaps a table on the About page which literally says:

## SWC option 1

Day | Session  | Topic
1 | AM /3 hrs/ | Shell scripting
1 | PM /3 hrs/ | Intro to python
2 | AM /3 hrs/ | More advanced python
2 | PM /3 hrs/ | Version control using git

## SWC option 2
Day | Session | Topic
1 | AM | Shell scripting
1 | PM | Intro to R
2 | AM | More advanced R
2 | PM | Version control using git

etc …

Cheers,
Darya


-Original Message-
From: Moreau, John (UMKC-Student) 
Reply: Moreau, John (UMKC-Student) 
Date: 13 April 2016 at 04:14:47
To: Neil Chue Hong (SSI) , Davide Del Vento 
, Maneesha Sane 
Cc: Software Carpentry Discussion 
Subject:  Re: [Discuss] Outreach misconception about Data and Software 
Carpentry as piece of software instead of skills

> +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 ; Maneesha Sane  
> Cc: Software Carpentry Discussion  
> 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 >  
> 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 

Re: [Discuss] Outreach misconception about Data and Software Carpentry as piece of software instead of skills

[Raniere Silva]

Hi John,

> 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.

Thanks to share your experience. This was very interesting.
I always advertize our workshops as Python or R workshop
in social media but never had this problem. I'm not trying to blame
anyone but could you let us know if for that workshop students need to
register themselves going over our workshop template [1]
or this was an private workshop?

Cheers,
Raniere

[1]: http://github.com/swcarpentry/workshop-template

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Re: [Discuss] Outreach misconception about Data and Software Carpentry as piece of software instead of skills

[Davide Del Vento]

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> 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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>>
>
>
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