2023-rsecon.md

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Experiences from teaching basic RSE skills with CodeRefinery

Samantha Wittke, CSC - IT Center for Science, Finland

Radovan Bast, UiT - The Arctic University of Norway

RSECon 2023, Swansea

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Team and project: coderefinery.org

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What we are

• A hub for FAIR research software practices
• Since 2016, now phase 3 until 2025
• Currently funded by NeiC
• Training network
• Community

What we do

• We teach and co-organize
• Share lessons, video recordings, manuals
• All open source ]

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.cite[Heidi Seibold, CC-BY 4.0, https://twitter.com/HeidiBaya/status/1579385587865649153]

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Lessons

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Lessons

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Workshop setup

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Collaborative document: Markdown

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Interactive, anonymous, parallel, async

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New question every 1-2 minutes!

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ASCII-graph feedback

We publish Q&A for each workshop: Example

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Participating as a learner

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Exercise options

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Workshop stats

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• 7 online and 28 in-person workshops

• We reach over 500 persons/year

• Over 30 instructors/speakers

• Over 100 helpers/ exercise leaders ]

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Collaboration across funding borders

0.9 FTE (2 persons) + 10 persons in-kind + volunteers

Co-advertize and co-organize with us

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What we have learned

About motivating/teaching

• Teaching isn't a lecture anymore. It's more .emph[like a live TV production], which can be as interactive as people in a room.

• .emph[Co-teaching] is a great way to onboard, get better quality, and reduce stress

• .emph[Good enough practices] better than perfect practices not applied

• Instead of "good for others": ".emph[good for your future you] and as side effect good for others"

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What we have learned

About scaling

• .emph[Installation instructions and on-boarding] become more important

• We don't "see" classrooms -> .emph[feedback mechanism] in Q&A doc

• Make exercises longer to .emph[give classrooms the chance to interact]

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Future: Organization

• Communicate value for volunteers and organizations

• Research groups send their students to us instead of creating isolated material

• More collaboration with similar projects ("helper exchange program")

• Towards non-profit organization so that we can participate in funding applications ]

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Teaching format

• Continue large-scale workshops

• Support local events

• More asynchronous content coupled with online events ]

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How you or your organization can participate

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• Join our next workshop September 19-21 and 26-28, 2023: https://coderefinery.github.io/2023-09-19-workshop/
• Tell all your students and researchers to watch
• Send one or more exercise teams or join as observer
• Use our material and give feedback

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Credits and license

Text

• All text: CodeRefinery project, CC-BY 4.0

Images

• Slide 3: H. Seibold, "6 helpful steps for reproducible research", CC-BY 4.0
• Slides 6, 11, 12, 18: S. Wittke
• Slide 14: ATC tower, P. R. Miller, CC-BY 2.0
• Slide 14: Monitor setup, R. Darst
• Slide 14: Logos, (c) respective organizations
• All other images: CodeRefinery project, CC-BY 4.0

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We try to make it easy to join

• Join our next workshop September 19-21 and 26-28, 2023: https://coderefinery.github.io/2023-09-19-workshop/

• Chat with us: https://coderefinery.zulipchat.com (ask questions about coding or learn about new tools)

• Blog, Newsletter, Twitter, Mastodon, Support

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Nordic RSE Unconference 2023

Theme: "💎 Hidden gems and paper cuts 🩹"

October 25 - 26, online, afternoon (CET)

https://nordic-rse.org/events/2023-online-unconference/

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These slides: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8317154