Software and Data Carpentry Instructor Training Comes to Africa

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

by Anelda van der Walt

North-West University eResearch, UCT eResearch, and Talarify are excited to announce that a Software & Data Carpentry Instructor Training event will take place in Potchefstroom, North-West Province, South Africa from 17 - 20 April 2016.

The lead trainer will be Aleksandra Pawlik, a Data Carpentry Steering Committee member. She will be joined by several of the more experienced South African instructors who provide additional support working with the trainee instructors.

In line with the approach taken previously by Belinda Weaver to help new instructors through the pipeline, this workshop will form part of a larger 12-month programme to help new instructors truly integrate into the community. The programme will include supporting instructor trainees to: complete the training after the workshop; run their first workshop at their home institution; and set up and run a user group or Mozilla Science Study Group to support participants from their workshop after the event

In 2017 the hosts, led by Anelda van der Walt, of the Instructor Training in Potchefstroom, aim to bring newly qualified instructors as well as the two or three most active community members from their study groups together again to share experiences and develop proposals for future initiatives.

The instructor training workshop will run over two and a half days. The last day will be used to introduce the concept of user groups and communities and expose participants to the Mozilla Science Lab Study Group Handbook and other useful resources that could be used to help set up and run these community events. The workshop will also include feedback from Maia Lesosky who started the Cape R User Group and members of the NWU Genomics Hacky Hour Study Group to provide real life anecdotes.

To ensure a transparent process is followed for selection of candidates the hosts have developed a rubric which will be used to score applications based on requirements set out in the original advertisement. An independent selection committee consisting of two international Software/Data Carpentry community members and four South African instructors will score the candidates. We hope to attract at least 50% women and other gender participants for the event.

For more information about the workshop please visit the NWU eResearch website.

If you’d like to learn more about the extended 12 month programme, please contact Anelda van der Walt.