Instructor Training

October 11, 12 and 16, 2023

11:00am to 3:00pm AEST 11-12 Oct, 9:00am to 5:00pm AEST 16 Oct.

Instructors: Sara King, Ann Backhaus, Mark Crowe

General Information

The Carpentries is a community of practice centered around teaching foundational coding and data science skills to researchers worldwide. This Instructor Training event is designed to prepare trainees to certify and participate as Carpentries Instructors. However, much of our curriculum focuses on educational principles that apply across a wide variety of contexts. We also welcome participants who do not plan to certify but simply wish to become a better teacher.

Carpentries Instructor Training has the following goals:

Because we have only limited time, some things are beyond the scope of this training. We will not be learning:

Instructor Training events are hands-on throughout: short lessons alternate with individual and group practical exercises, including practice teaching sessions. This Instructor Training event is the first step towards certification as a Carpentries Instructor. For more details on the other 3 steps, see the Checkout Instructions page. For more information, see our Instructor Training Curriculum.

Code of Conduct

All participants are required to abide by The Carpentries Code of Conduct.

Where

This workshop will be delivered online for the first two half days and in person for the final full day.

The online training will be conducted using the Zoom video conferencing platform. No log-in is needed. However, if you have not used Zoom before, please click the link a few minutes early as it may prompt you to install the Zoom app or browser extension. You will receive the Zoom connection link in the pre-workshop information email.

The in-person component will take place at CSIRO in in the Brisbane EcoSciences precinct: 41 Boggo Rd, Dutton Park QLD 4102. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.

Accessibility

We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. Workshop organisers have checked that:

Materials will be provided in advance of the workshop. If we can help make learning easier for you in any way by providing additional support, accommodations, or assistance, please get in touch (using contact details below) and we will attempt to provide them.

How to Prepare for Instructor Training

Before your training, please visit our Preparing for Instructor Training page for complete instructions. A brief summary of these instructions is as follows

  1. Complete our Pre-training Survey. You will receive a custom link for your event when you receive your connection information.
  2. Select a lesson to use for teaching practice sessions and prepare a 3 minute segment, spending no more than 20-30 minutes to prepare.
  3. Please read the following:

Checkout: The Instructor Certification Process

After the training event, we ask you to complete three follow-up tasks to become a certified Instructor. These requirements are detailed on our Checkout Instructions page and will be discussed at our training.

What to Bring to an In-Person Event

Participants should bring a laptop that is Internet connected and has a functioning browser. If you have it, a device for recording audio and video (mobile phones and laptops are OK) is useful as we are going to record one another teaching in pairs or threes. It does not have to be high-quality, but it should be good enough that you can understand what someone is saying.

Attendance and Cancellation

Trainees who miss more than 1 hour of the training may be marked absent. Instructor certification cannot be completed without full attendance at an Instructor Training event. If you unexpectedly need to miss more than 1 hour of your event, please contact your Trainers (contact info below).

For events in which registration occurs through The Carpentries via Eventbrite, cancellation may be performed in Eventbrite up to the start of the event. Canceled seats cannot be filled after the 1 week registration deadline for these events, so we ask that you only cancel if absolutely necessary.

More information on our cancellation and makeup policy is available in The Carpentries Handbook.

Contact

Please email liz.stokes@ardc.edu.au , mark.crowe@qcif.edu.au , sara.king@aarnet.edu.au or ann.backhaus@csiro.au for more information.


Preparation

Please read the following before the workshop begins:

  1. The Science of Learning
  2. The Carpentries 2021 Annual Report

Please also read through one episode of one of The Carpentries lessons below carefully, so that you can do some exercises based on it on the first day of the class. An episode is one page of a lesson.


Schedule

Day 1 - 11 October

11:00 Welcome
11:30 Building Skill with Practice
12:30 Break
13:00 Expertise and Instruction
13:45 Memory and Cognitive Load
14:30 Building Skill with Feedback
15:00 Finish day 1

Day 2 - 12 October

11:00 Welcome Back
11:15 Motivation and Demotivation
12:15 Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility
13:00 Break
13:30 Teaching Is a Skill
14:30 Wrap-up and Homework
14:50 Finish day 2

Day 3 - 16 October

09:00 Welcome Back
09:10 Getting Started on Instructor Certification
09:40 The Carpentries: How We Operate
10:25 Break
10:40 Live Coding Is a Skill
11:45 Preparing to Teach
12:30 Finish day 3
13:30 More Practice Live Coding
14:15 Working with Your Team
15:25 Break
15:40 Launches and Landings
16:20 Putting it Together
16:40 Wrapping Up
16:50 Post-Training Survey
17:05 Finish

Surveys

Before attending the workshop, please fill out our pre-training survey.

After the workshop, please fill out our post-training survey.