Studying Impact

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I am a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, and am using my fellowship to work on making software training better. My main interest is in teaching computational chemistry software and making it accessible to a wide range of scientists. Like Software Carpentry, the courses I teach are one-off teaching events: basically, we have a maximum of two days to help your professional development.

Together with Greg Wilson, I am conducting research to analyse what impact Software Carpentry workshop have had on participants with respect to their professional skills. In particular, I would like to interview past participants in Software Carpentry workshops to analyse the impact those workshops have had on them. We cannot reimburse you for your time, but if you are willing to take part in an interview, your experience will help us make Software Carpentry better. The interviews can be done via telephone or Skype and can be arranged at a convenient time; we have ethics approval for this study, and every participant will be informed what exactly we do with their data.

Please contact me by email if you wish to take part, and pass on this request to other workshop alumni.

Thanks in advance,
Alexandra Simperler