Carpentry@UiO 2022 Annual Report #

Report written by Elisa Pierfederici, Sofie Gilbert and Annika Rockenberger (University of Oslo library)

Learner Feedback and Continuous Evaluation #

Carpentries survey #

Major strength #

What to be improved #

How instructors and helpers affected learning experiences #

Survey in future #

Workshops held #

Two-day Data Carpentry Workshop #

• November Data Carpentry: Social Sciences and Humanities Using R - on-site
• September TidyVerse - on-site
• April Carpentry@UiO: Data Analysis and Visualization in R and Tidyverse (Novices) - on-site

One-day Carpentry Workshop #

• November Data Carpentry: R for Social Scientist - on-site
• October Unix Shell - on-site
• April Using Databases and SQL - on-site

In numbers #

Workshop modes #

• All workshop were done in-person

Workshop types #

• Three 2-day Carpentry workshop (R, Tidyverse, R-Tydiverse)
• Three 1-day Carpentry workshops (R, Unix Shell and SQL)

#* Comment Elisa: I have notice there is a difference between Carpentry and Carpentry@UIO workshop but I am not sure which belong to which

Workshop participation #

Workshop evaluation #

In 2020, the community managers together with the library and the Board decided to stop with sending out post-workshop evaluations. We did this mainly due to “feedback fatigue” which we experienced during 2019 already. Since we are now registering all official Carpentries workshops and official free-standing Carpentries modules with the Carpentries’ database AMY, we have access to their pre- and post-workshop surveys.

At the same time, we set a general reflection around workshop evaluations in motion with the wish to re-phrase and shorten workshop feedback forms. This work is still ongoing. Plans are to create a new feedback form in 2022. ? #* have something been done with this?

In the meantime, “sticky-note feedback” is occasionally collected at on-site workshops. This is mainly used for workshop de-briefing with instructors and helpers. The transcribed feedback is kept in a secure cloud storage space and can be accessed upon request.

General themes of all modes of feedback that we received during and after workshops are:

Requests #

• learners request (more) advanced workshops for the same tools, especially R and Python
• learners request more frequent workshops
• learners request more a workshop on Ggplot2 package in R

Appreciation #

• learners appreciate the availability and fast response of helpers
• learners like the “friendly atmosphere” of Carpentries workshops
• learners mostly appreciate the slow pace and the focus on participatory live coding

Social events #

• An online onboarding session (September) ?
• Carpentry@UiO community fika (October) ?
• Carpentry@UiO yule brunch (December)

Organisation #

Local Community Coordinator #

The tasks of the local community coordinator were shared by AR and NT (both University of Oslo Library). In practice, this means support in recruiting instructors and helpers for workshops, setting up workshop websites, setting up and managing workshop registration, communication with workshop participants, communication with The Carpentries regarding workshops, maintenance of the UiO-Carpentry websites hosted by UiO/UBO as well as the community website hosted on GitHub, managing mailing lists, communication with the UiO-community via mailing lists, booking rooms and/or setting up virtual rooms, checking in with instructors and helpers before and after workshops.

The local coordinators established and documented effective routines for most tasks regarding hosting workshops and community-communication.

Board #

In March 2020, the UiO-Carpentry Board was successfully constituted. The election took place in February, and four Board Members were elected for a term of 2 years. In addition, the UiO library appointed two Board Members. The Board consists of the following members:

• Chair Lex Nederbragt
• Vice-chair Viviane Girardin
• Communication officer Naoe Tatara (appointed by UiO library)
• Secretary Tobias Busch
• Annika Rockenberger (appointed by UiO library)
• Anne Bergsaker

The Board can be contacted via Board @ carpentry dot uio dot no. The Board had four meetings during 2020, minutes for the meetings can be found in (organisational/meetings), “yyddmm_board-meeting.md”.

Website #

Workshop page #

• Where: https://www.ub.uio.no/english/courses-events/courses/other/Carpentry/
• Focus: Descriptions of typical lessons covered and format of the workshops.
• Structure: Having a sub-directory that contains files that are about each workshop (called “arrangement files”).

Community page #

• Where: https://www.ub.uio.no/english/writing-publishing/dsc/carpentry-uio/index.html
• Focus: Introduction of Carpentry@UiO as a community.
• Structure: Currently a single page under DSC’s site. Giving info about who we are, what we are doing, and how to get involved, as well as an explanation of the Carpentries.

GitHub, Communication #

TO DO FOR 2023 NOTES #

• Reorganize the structure of R courses such as “Data Carpentry: Social Sciences and Humanities Using R”. (Spreadsheet?, Open refine?) Should we divide the course in two?
• A common pattern across year is that a part of the participant that register only comes or de-register the day before the workshop, making it difficult to let people on the waiting list to be able to participate. Should we open the courses for a number > than the actual capacity?
• Course information needs to be made more visible for the participants in the site and sending an e-mail with set-up instructions in advance
• When sending the Post-workshop survey send also link to DSC newsletter
• Need more control over the instructors; some feedback was particularly negative towards soem of the instructors. It could help to have more coordination between co-instructors,