Category Archives: Carpentry

A video introduction to instructing by means of live coding

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As part of my training to become an instructor-trainer for Software and Data Carpentry, I want to help further develop the material used during instructor training workshops. Greg Wilson, who heads the instructor training, and I, decided to make some videos to demonstrate good and not-so-good practices when teaching workshops. Greg recently released his “example of bad teaching” video focussing on general teaching techniques.

For my contribution, I wanted to demonstrate as many aspects as I could of what I wrote in my “10 tips and tricks for instructing and teaching by means of live coding” post.

So here was the plan:

  • make two 2-3 minute videos with contrasting ways of doing a live coding session
  • one demonstrates as many ways as possible how to not do this
  • one uses as many good practices as possible
  • during the instructor-training workshop, participants are asked (in small groups) to discuss the differences and their relevance.

With help from colleague Tore Oldeide Elgvin (the cameraman) and local UiO Carpentry organisers Anne Fouilloux and Katie Dean (playing the role of learners), we recorded the videos. It took about two hours and a dozen attempts, but it was fun to do. Amazing how difficult it is to not doing your best while teaching…

Here are the videos – watch them before you read on about what they were supposed to show. Note that (part of) the unix shell ‘for-loop’ lesson is what is being taught. It is assumed the instructor has already explained shell variables (when to use the ‘$’ in front and when not).

Many thanks to Tore, Anne and Katie for helping out making these videos!

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 1:

  • instructor ignores a red sticky clearly visible on a learner’s laptop
  • instructor is sitting, mostly looking at the laptop screen
  • instructor is typing commands without saying them out loud
  • instructor uses fancy bash prompt
  • instructor uses small font in not full-screen terminal window with black background
  • the terminal window bottom is partially blocked by the learner’s heads for those sitting in the back
  • instructor receives a a pop-up notification in the middle of the session
  • instructor makes a mistake (a typo) but simply fixes it without pointing it out, and redoes the command

Part 2:

  • instructor checks if the learner with the red sticky on her laptop still needs attention
  • instructor is standing while instructing, making eye-contact with participants
  • instructor is saying the commands out loud while typing them
  • instructor moves to the screen to point out details of commands or results
  • instructor simply uses ‘$ ‘ as bash prompt
  • instructor uses big font in wide-screen terminal window with white background
  • the terminal window bottom is above the learner’s heads for those sitting in the back
  • instructor makes mistake (a typo) and uses the occasion to illustrate how to interpret error-messages

Carpentry week 2016 at the University of Oslo

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In March 14-18 2016 we organised the first Carpentry week at the University of Oslo. After a mini-Seminar on Open Data Skills, there was a Software Carpentry workshop, two Data Carpentry workshops and a workshop on Reproducible Science as well as a ‘beta’ Library Carpentry workshop.

The Software and Data Carpentry effort at the University of Oslo, aka ‘Carpentry@UiO’, really started in 2012 when I invited Software Carpentry to give a workshop at the university. The then director, Greg Wilson, came himself and gave an inspirational workshop – recruiting Karin Lagesen and I to become workshop instructors in the process. Karin and I graduated from instructor training spring 2013 and have been giving a couple of workshops in Oslo and elsewhere.

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On being an instructor for Software and Data Carpentry

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I was recently asked to provide a testimonial on why I am an instructor for Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry. Here it is:

Teaching in general, and at Software and Data Carpentry workshops in particular, gives me great pleasure and is one of the most personally rewarding activities I engage in. With Software Carpentry, I feel I belong to a community that shares many of the same values I have: openness, tolerance, a focus on quality in teaching to name a few. The instructor training program is the best pedagogical program I know of, and it is amazing to see how Software and Data Carpentry are building a community of educators that are fully grounded in the research on educational practices.

Being an instructor is my way of making a small, but hopefully significant, contribution to improving science, and thus the world.

This testimonial can also be found here.