Work Cycle Ganymede Wraps Up

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are wrapping up Cycle Ganymede. Here’s what we accomplished over the past six weeks and what we’re still working on. To help with any of these projects, please get in touch!

Archiving Pre- and Post-Workshop Survey Data

What did we do?

During the previous work cycle, Data Carpentry launched new pre- and post-workshop surveys that included skills-based questions, and the ability for respondents to provide a unique identifier to facilitate future paired analyses. We archived the old survey data for Data Carpentry and created a draft RMarkdown report and plots for all of the data. Paula Andrea Martinez helped Kari Jordan with this. Because of the way the code is structured, there was no easy way to create a RMarkdown report that includes only selected plots. Hopefully, we will find a way round this for future reports.

How can you help?

If you’re interested in other visualizations or analyses of our data, please contribute! All our data and the code that generated this report is available for reuse. We would love to see people with other questions or ideas use the data in their work or contribute for future reports.

Long-term Survey Report

What did we do?

The results of the Carpentries long-term survey are extremely compelling, and we want to share them with a broader community. Accordingly, a team led by Kari Jordan is working to draft a manuscript around our long-term survey results. Assessment will be the topic of our October 19 community call.

How can you help?

If you would like to know more about our assessment work, or if you would like to help out in some way, please join the October 19 call. If you have recently attended a workshop, please complete the survey. You can also join our Google Group on assessment.

Instructor Training Curriculum Lesson Release

What did we do?

Trainers and instructors did a lot of work readying our instructor training curriculum for the release of a new version. Thanks to all who took part. The material has now been published. See it here.

How can you help?

If you are a Trainer teaching this material, please let us know if you find any errors or omissions by raising an issue on the GitHub repository. We would also value more general feedback.

Genomics Lesson Update

What did we do?

Many new and current Maintainers, as well as other members of our community, worked long and hard at both an Issue Bonanza and Bug BBQ to prepare the Genomics Lesson for release. Because of the number of outstanding issues and pull requests that need to be resolved, the release has been postponed to early November. A huge thank you to everyone who has been taking part in this release! You can see some of the milestones here, here and here. In the Genomics curricula, we are also piloting a new approach involving a curriculum committee and more maintainers, and using a ‘Looks Good to Me’ model. Thanks to everyone who has been involved in this pilot model. There are still some things to figure out, and we will be updating this with a maintainers report, to see if this is a general model we can use for other curriculum.

How can you help?

We would welcome assistance with both resolving issues and reviewing the outstanding pull requests. Please contact Erin Becker if you can help.

FAQ Update

What did we do?

As we prepare for a joint Carpentries, we plan to standardize information and procedures across both organizations. During this cycle, the existing website FAQs were moved into HelpScout, during which time they were also updated and tagged (some with multiple tags). Some new FAQs were created as well. The website for the updated FAQs is http://info.carpentries.org/, and it is keyword-searchable.

How can you help?

Looking for the answer to something but can’t find it? Reading through the FAQs and notice something that should be updated or edited? Please let us know so we can update it or add it to the knowledge base.

What else?

During this cycle, all Software and Data Carpentry staff travelled to in Davis, California for a two-day, in-person meeting. Read about what we achieved there.