Introduction

The Carpentries

The Carpentries is an international volunteer organization that teaches basic tech skills for researchers, via workshops in three areas:

Computing and data skills are a growing part of every academic discipline making it necessary to incorporate in curriculum. The Carpentries fill the gaps in the basic training that can make research easier and more efficient–“to get more done in less time and with less pain” (Greg Wilson). Importantly, they are committed to a particular method of teaching these skills that is informed by research and aims to build a positive learning community:

The Carpentries develop and teach in-person, interactive, hands-on, two-day workshops for learning core data science and coding skills. Carpentries workshops are taught by volunteer Instructors, trained in pedagogy, who focus on creating a motivating and engaging environment for learners. All our lessons are open source, hosted on GitHub, and collaboratively developed by our volunteer community.

Outline

  1. Develop - look at the collaborative lesson development process, because I think these OER help enable active learning
  2. Teach - review Carpentries methods for hosting interactive sessions
  3. Examples - introduce some other example partly informed by these techniques
  4. Resources - references to get started!