Short-Format Professional Development
Overview
Our short-format Professional Development courses help you keep your skills up-to-date for the rapidly evolving digital workplace with focused training in remote collaboration, effective meeting facilitation, and more. Each course is 2-3 hours in length, and can be attended by individuals or cohorts. Initial course offerings are listed below, with additional courses to be introduced over the coming year.
GitHub Skills
GitHub Skills equips participants with the essential skills they need to contribute to and maintain collaborative projects hosted on GitHub. This course focuses on fundamental skills like issue management, contribution and review workflows, and team coordination. Whether you are developing software, managing documentation, or contributing to open-source lessons, this hands-on course will empower you to confidently navigate common tasks on GitHub.
Target audience
This training is designed for individuals and teams who use GitHub to manage collaborative projects. It is particularly well-suited for:
- Educators and content developers who create and maintain collaboratively-developed learning materials.
- Research teams who develop or support open-source software.
- Committee or working group members who manage discussions and documents.
No prior experience with GitHub beyond basic usage (e.g. cloning a repository) is expected. The focus is on practical skills for collaborative contribution, rather than software development or command-line Git expertise.
What will you learn?
The training teaches foundational and role-specific GitHub skills, including:
- Creating and managing issues (labelling, tagging, linking, and referencing).
- Working with branches and forks.
- Making contributions through pull requests, including resolving merge conflicts and accepting suggestions.
- Reviewing and commenting on pull requests.
- Using GitHub for team coordination, including tagging users and teams and participating in threaded discussions.
After attending this training, participants will be able to:
- Contribute effectively to shared projects by identifying issues, proposing changes, and submitting well-structured pull requests.
- Collaborate using GitHub features to review, discuss, and merge contributions.
- Maintain repositories by triaging issues, resolving conflicts, and synchronising changes across branches.
- Coordinate work and facilitate decision-making using GitHub’s communication and collaboration tools.
Running Effective Online Meetings
Running Effective Online Meetings provides practical strategies for facilitating engaging, productive, and inclusive virtual meetings. As online collaboration becomes increasingly common across research, education, non-profit, and professional settings, the ability to plan and run meetings that foster participation and drive progress is an essential skill. This training offers tools for meeting preparation, facilitation, follow-up, and accessibility, emphasising approaches that centre equity and shared leadership. Whether leading regular team check-ins, hosting global community calls, or convening ad hoc project groups, this training will help you create virtual spaces that support meaningful collaborations.
Target audience
This course is intended for anyone responsible for organising and facilitating online meetings in their workplace or community. It is particularly relevant for:
- Team leads, project coordinators, and committee chairs
- Community organisers
- Professionals and volunteers working in distributed or hybrid environments.
No prior experience with facilitation or online platforms is required. The training is applicable across tools (e.g. Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams) and adaptable to a variety of meeting formats and group sizes.
What will you learn?
Participants will gain skills in:
- Setting clear agendas, goals, and expectations.
- Facilitating conversations to encourage equitable participation.
- Using online tools effectively for collaboration and accessibility.
- Managing time, decision-making, and follow-up.
- Troubleshooting common challenges in remote environments.
After attending this training, participants will be able to:
- Design and lead online meetings that are welcoming, efficient, and outcomes-focused.
- Apply strategies to ensure all participants have a voice and feel included.
- Use meeting tools and features (e.g. chat, polls, breakout rooms) to support interaction.
- Document meetings in ways that support transparency and continuity.
- Cultivate a culture of respect, accountability, and shared ownership in virtual spaces.
Effective Collaboration for Remote Teams
Effective Collaboration on Remote Teams introduces tools and strategies for working productively and inclusively in distributed environments. This training focuses on building clarity, trust, and efficiency within remote teams through intentional decision-making, clear zones of responsibility, and thoughtful communication norms. Whether your team is fully remote or operating in a hybrid format, this course provides actionable approaches to build a more collaborative team across time zones and working styles.
Target audience
This course is ideal for team leads and project managers who manage remote or hybrid teams. It is particularly relevant for teams that are primarily remote and operate across multiple time zones.
What will you learn?
Participants will learn practices that support strong team collaboration, including:
- Designing and using decision-making frameworks and role definitions.
- Establishing clear, inclusive communication norms for asynchronous work.
- Promoting shared ownership, accountability, and psychological safety on distributed teams.
By the end of this training, participants will be able to:
- Apply structured decision-making tools to clarify roles and responsibilities.
- Collaboratively create and implement communication practices that support asynchronous collaboration.
- Identify and address common challenges in remote team dynamics.
Pricing
Consult our pricing page for our current fee structure.
Register
Registration link coming soon!
Request Accessibility Support
The Carpentries is committed to providing inclusive and accessible content that enables all individuals, including those with disabilities, to participate and engage fully. To request accessibility support for a Carpentries event, please visit our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement and fill out the accessibility support request form provided.
Contact Us
Have Questions? Please contact our team at team@carpentries.org.