The Carpentries' Programmatic Assessment

Starting this year, we are releasing quarterly programmatic assessment reports (see this blog post). These reports will share information about the growth rates of our workshops and instructor training programs, our geographic impact, and other metrics. We are happy to announce the publication of our first report.

This first report follows activity around Carpentries’ workshops, Instructors, and Trainers from 2012 through the first quarter of 2018 (January - March). From 2012 through March 2018, 58 Trainers badged 1,480 Instructors. Carpentry Instructors taught 1,332 workshops, reaching more than 37,000 learners in 44 countries. The report also highlights our significant geographic expansion, such as the growth of an active community of Instructors and Trainers in eight African countries.

Through this report, we can see that this great growth can be attributed to a committed community of people in Instructor, Trainer, and other roles. It is their work that has built a Carpentries presence in new geographies. It is their work that has helped The Carpentries understand what works best for things like class size (see the full report for why we may be changing our class size recommendation).

We have also identified areas where we have the opportunity to improve. This includes finding opportunities to build sustainable communities in new geographies, as there are many countries where we have not had a continuing presence after running one or two workshops. We also badge many Instructors who do not go on to teach after getting certified. This puts the onus on us to ensure that Instructors are supported and have clear pathways to begin teaching. Our new Mentoring Program, which matches experienced Instructors with small groups of new Instructors to help them learn specific skills, is one avenue towards improving this metric. If you’re interested in helping develop other support structures for new Instructors, please join the next meeting of the Mentoring Subcommittee.

We’re excited to share this data with the community, and even more excited to hear your thoughts, comments, and ideas. Feedback on this report is welcome. This can include reactions or new questions raised by information shared in this report; suggestions for other analyses or visualisations; code review; or any other comments. Feedback can be shared via issues in this GitHub repo or via email to team@carpentries.org.