I became a certified instructor for The Carpentries following some intensive and rather enjoyable training in Norwich in 2014. Since then I have regularly acted as lead- or co-instructor for short workshops designed to enhance the computational and data skills of researchers at all levels (graduate students to faculty) in universities and other research organisations. I also occasionally contribute to lesson development, mentor new instructors, and regularly participate in UK Carpentries community meetings. My experience of teaching these workshops has heavily influenced my approach to teaching programming to undergraduate students studying the Earth sciences. Along the way, I contributed to and led some significant training activities for researchers in the UK environmental sciences.
Led by Dr Chris Wood at EPCC and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, we’ve developed and delivered a series of workshops for researchers in the environmental sciences. These were delivered online and in person (in Oxford, Edinburgh and Liverpool) and consisted of Carpentries lessons modified to fit within the context of the environmental sciences alongside some additional material. Different variants of these workshops are aimed at novice, intermediate and advanced learners and some contain novel "bring your own data" sessions. We’re currently in the process of developing an application for funding for another round of workshops scheduled for 2025.
We ran a series of nine modified software carpentry workshops in Leeds and Bristol as part of three successive projects funded by the 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17 Advanced Training Short Course scheme of the Natural Environment Research Council (I was principal investigator). These workshops built on the two day Carpentries format by adding co-designed group software development projects. Our grant application which describes the need for and design of these workshops can be found on Figshare.