 11 o'clock time to go. All right. Good morning everybody You've come to the session on software carpentry in the library. How many of you have heard of software carpentry? Oh good a lot of you excellent. Glad to hear that. All right. It's a great Great organization, and we're having a lot of success with it. So glad you're all here. Here's what we want to cover today We're going to do a little introduction. We're going to talk about identifying research your needs developing a partnership with software carpentry How our hosting of workshops has come underway? What we've done to build a community around software carpentry? And then we're going to talk about Lessons we've learned so if you're you're early in the game Maybe you can benefit from those and how we're trying to expand this going forward So if you don't know me, I'm Carl Grahame. I'm the associate dean of knowledge services and the chief technology officer at the University of Oklahoma a Lot of people call me old hand because I've been around in this business for a long time And of course that means I've got a lot of experience in something so One of the things that I really enjoy about being an old hand though to be perfectly honest is identifying young librarians that have a lot of potential and so if you've seen your library journal this month I Want to point out that that person right there is this lady right here Sarah Clayton and I had to do this because she Know I had I had to say but this just came out So, you know, she's a fresh freshly meant to move her and shake her and part of what she was recognized for Was a working software carpentry So she was one of three. I mean 352 people were nominated from across the US 52 made the final cut eight made digital content Developers she's one of those so Congratulations here Okay, let me give you a little background here Software carpentry it started not far from here at Los Alamos National Lab by Greg Wilson back in 20 years ago, so I've been around for quite a long time All materials they've developed are released under a Creative Commons license. So they're all out there use them Do any kind of creative work you want with them? There's over a hundred and twenty videos available that are you can watch them learn from And basically what it does and I'm sure you all have the same problem on your campuses that we have in ours You know the big researchers when they go get the big grant they can hire their own people But the problem is those people are dedicated to that grant. So all the smaller researchers They don't have that. They don't have that capability. They need it They don't often know that upfront and they don't so they come they come to various agencies looking for help and assistance And we saw an opportunity there and so software carpentry So what they offer which is I think ideal because when you take a software carpentry class You're not signing up for a semester-long class. You're signing up for two days Dedicate two days out of your life You learn man-line tools you learn a programming language and version control version control I'm amazed at how many people Dealing with technology do not understand version control and you know in a research project. That's kind of important So this is one of the things that gets taught here and we think it's really really important It also offers instructor certification one of the ways that software carpentry has grown is by doing Software instructor certification routines. And so we've got a number of people on our staff that are Certified as instructors Sarah's one of these people And I always marvel at you know, she was kind of new to our organization and we walked down to her and said her You know, how'd you like to become a software carpentry instructor? She didn't even hesitate. I mean she was just okay. I'll give it a try. It was great So we were really impressed by her freer fearless attitude Now there are over 500 certified instructors and they travel all over the country that get invited out to do this We just had two of our software Certified instructors at Library of Congress teaching them about this. So we felt pretty good about that There's over 16,000 people have been through the software carpentry courses today. So that's a lot That's the URL if you want to go get information you can do so John a duckles the executive director of software carpentry Actually came out of OU. He was he was one of he was running our informatics group and Really caught on with this and and did well And I really like this quote at his because I think it exactly Replicates what we feel one of the things you'll notice our our little logo down there We really position our library as the intellectual crossroads of the universe. You do this all the time We do it in lots and lots of ways creative learning commons digital scholarship labs Exhibitions our Galileo world exhibition that I've spoken about at this conference before was a huge up So we're trying to pull people from all the colleges on our campus and have them intersect And they learn from each other the problem I see on our campus, and I'm sure you see it on your campus They all get in their silos And they don't come out, you know, once in a while they might show up for food somewhere. That's about it or coffee So we're always trying to pull them together because we know that they all have knowledge that the others can benefit from And so if they get get them talking particularly around to topic Then it can be really productive and they learn and they share and they do things that Build that community on your campus One of the things that's frustrated me since I've been in involved in this is I've gone out and given a lot of talks around I find a lot of them when I talk to them about it go. We'll leave that to it No, don't leave it to it. You have all these resources in your library That you can connect researchers with that'll be of value to them and one of the opportunities This does is to create that Opportunity for you to say, you know, we could help you with that. We got something here. We got something there It's a great way to pull them into your library Let them understand all the resources you have of all the technology you have and if you follow this at all You know, we've got a lot with technology in the last couple of years And so we can we can walk them into 3d printing we can walk them into virtual reality We walk them into microcontrollers and software Learning so all those are opportunities and it all underscores that idea. We want to be the crossroads on the university so you have to join software carpentry and For us to join at the level. We wanted it was $10,000. Of course, that's not chump change Let's be honest So we went around campus and we formed a coalition Between a whole bunch of groups all you libraries was one of the larger ones We went to the vice president of research We got some commitment from them and we went to the colleges varks and sciences because they have a huge need for these Kind of skills with their faculty We got biosurvey that was eyeball deep and meeting these kind of skills and we went to our climate science center All of these pitched a little money So none of us were out a whole bunch And we were able to get the membership Thank You Carl So we talked a bit about these researcher needs that we saw across campus and a lot of this information came out of Jonah and our Informatics team and also our research data management specialists who are meeting with faculty on a regular basis And we saw this growing need to automate research processes Both for speed and for reproducibility and that includes the code They're running on their on their research and also a lot of these labs are having change over with graduate students through the year And so if a graduate student from ten years did some ago did something it's really great for the new graduate students to know that as well Carl mentioned this so a lot of the less well funded researchers in particular They don't have any money to high pro higher programmers or informatics or they realize they need it after they have their grant And it's kind of too late at that point So they're relying on those graduate students to serve that need Unfortunately, there's no training at OU and any of the graduate curriculum on Research computing skills and there's really no space for it They're about maxed out on the coursework they can have so the graduate students need to do this work But have to teach themselves how to do it. It's not a great model We center this training in the library like Carl mentioned We want the library to agree those crossroads for reachers on campus. We have other services We have a space people are coming to our digital scholarship lab for interdepartmental or across department meetings It also allows us as librarians and library staff to connect further with these researchers and continue to understand their their needs and Finally, we have the team. We have people with the skills to teach the software techniques version control python And we might as well utilize them since we already have them So I'm going to go into a bit of the details of how we host these workshops locally at OU This is a photo from our most recent workshop we had at the end of March So like Carl mentioned these are two full-day workshops starting at 9 a.m. and ending at 4 30 p.m That's a pretty big time commitment for any researcher Student faculty anyone on the university. So if they're coming to these workshops, they must have recognized a need for this We have two certified instructors in each section. We also have multiple helpers. These are people who may already have these skills They may be going through the certification process to be an instructor and we really try to have One helper for every table of six to eight learners. So there's always someone there to help them We limit the participation to each workshop to about 40 Participants and software carpentry. We can to call them learners because often they're not in the student role We found if you have more than 40 people It's really hard to paste these workshops because they are hands-on and interactive We found a sweet spot between 20 and 40 for each workshop works really well And finally we have over the past year or two we developed a model of having three open workshops Per semester we have one at the beginning one in the mid and the middle and one at the end And this has worked pretty well both for accommodating all the learners who want to participate and also for not over overtaxing our instructor pool and So sorry we have hosted 13 open workshops and when I say open I mean completely open Anyone from the OU community to sign up. We've even had some researchers from federal projects drive down to Norman to take Them and got a lot of out of them We also do additional workshops for research groups So if there's a lab group who really wants these skills Make sometimes they'll partner with another lab group so we can fill up a section We tend to do these in the summer this also allows us to kind of customize the workshop for data That's relevant for that research group, which is really nice So far we've had over 300 faculty graduate students and staff participate in these workshops And we're pretty happy with these numbers A lot of the staff have actually been from the library These skills are useful for their work and also for liaisons They really want to take these workshops so they understand what their faculty need and can also refer them to this Workshop is appropriate These faculty graduate students and staff have come from all over in the university We've had over 30 departments and research groups so far We started very strong in the sciences microbiology and biology took up on this right away also Geography meteorology Chemistry we're trying to branch out into the social sciences more. This is super relevant for them We've had some success with political science and psychology We've had a few humanities folks take this especially people in digital humanities But we're trying to continue to expand that reach So this is actually the schedule for a software carpentry workshop on day one They come in right at nine and we start with using the command line and learning how to automate research tasks And that's three hours. There is a coffee break in there in the bathroom break. So no one goes crazy We also have a lunch break and then we start up with Python in the afternoon And we don't expect the learners to become experts in Python through these workshops A lot of it is learning how to think programmatically Learning what a function is what a variable is how you can think like a computer program or what? On the second day we start in with version control We bring the learners back to the command line have them create some code start tracking it Start tracking it with git and then store it with a local Remote repository and GitHub and also learn how to contract collaborate on projects in the afternoon We continue with Python we get a bit more advanced when they leave the workshop They've created some sort of visualization and Python Which is pretty rewarding. I think at the end of the day. We do a wrap-up session as for feedback Tell them about continuing services. We have at the library So all of these workshops involve live coding. So we never have PowerPoint slides It's the instructor with their computer in front of a room full of people Which is great and also a little intimidating for new instructors You're live coding. So I'm typing things in the command line I tend to make a lot of typos. So we teach our instructors to turn those into learning opportunities So you make a typo you get an error message back That's an opportunity to look at the error message figure out what it means go back and debug your code I hear tell That some people who don't make mistakes have to actually plant these in luckily. I don't have that problem I'm helpers are also there to provide on the spot assistance, which is really nice when you're doing interactive workshops If someone misses one command or one click, it's really easy to feel hopelessly lost So the instructors know all the workshop material can get up and help at any time We also use something called an etherpad as an extra assistance during these workshops So it has a place for taking notes and also answering chat questions So the helpers are also monitoring this throughout the workshop there to adding notes tips additional resources Someone had a question. That's not very pertinent to the beginning material of covering software carving tree We'll answer it in here. We also have different discussions happening in the chat You probably can't see this but I'm someone's asking what programming learned which would you encourage students to learn So a couple of our helpers had different responses to that This is a thing people love about software carving dream We've actually adapted it for other workshops because it works really well It's the red and green sticky notes So we give all learners a red and green sticky note at the beginning for the green sticky note on your computer If everything's going well for the red if you need help Once you throw out that red sticky note, you'll be sworn by helpers They're literally sitting on the edge of their seat trying to trying to help people It's also useful for the instructors if you're in a room and you see a sea of red sticky notes You probably need no you need to take a break or repeat something We also use them for questions during the workshop Put up a green sticky note if you've worked through this Python problem we posed put up a Green if you're done and rather if you're still working We also use these sticky notes to Collect feedback after each day so write something on the green sticky note that you liked Something on the red that we could improve and we have used these to further tailor our workshops So Should actually click at the computer. So this is a great green sticky note So the workshop should be mandatory for every research assistant. I know you is very useful This is really reassuring to me as an instructor that we're actually serving in need This is probably my favorite comment. So after attending this workshop I can figure out how to begin with Python shell and get how and I can learn it by myself And I'm not afraid of it. There's a high intimidation factor when people are coming to these programming languages and we can't it's only two days We can't teach you everything you need to know, but it's really nice to know that they have the confidence now to pursue these skills further Related to that we're not leaving them hanging after we do these workshops. We build a whole community around it So we have a research data management specialist who regularly teaches them informatics team our digital scholarship team Which I'm a part of and our emerging technology team Each of these teams has a public-facing role. They offer consultations. They're regularly interacting with researchers We found if you spend two days in a room with an instructor you feel pretty comfortable with them afterwards You have a contact person. You know where to go for questions and that's been pretty huge We also offer regular drop-in hours both before and after software carving tree We offer them twice a week and these serve two purposes around the software carving community first it identifies learners So we'll have people come in saying they want to learn programming and while we can give them resources to get them started We can't teach every researcher at OU individually how to program So we'll say here are a few things to get you started Why don't you sign up for the software carving tree in two weeks if you can't make that one? There's one in a month It also provides immediate assistance after the workshops so After each workshop we normally have one or two researchers return the very next Thursday To find out this is my data. I tried to do some Python on it. It's not working. Can you help me debug it? So we're not writing code in these sessions, but we're helping people work through their Programming and data problems It also gives us a venue to advertise future workshops. We offer at OU Carl mentioned some of these Virtual reality 3d printing we hold a research bazaar, which is two full days of a variety of workshops I'm also a data visualization workshop. We had one graduate student who really utilized this whole model So I'll quickly tell her story She is a graduate student in political science. She came to our office hours saying I want to pull all this data off The web our informatics team helped her write some web scraping code and Python then said why don't you attend this software? Carping to workshop it really build your skills out through that she connected with our digital scholarship team who helped her develop a text mining application She then used Python to analyze all of her results And then last week she came to a data visualization workshop because now she's finally ready to create her graphs and finish her dissertation So in addition to fostering community around our participants, we're also building community with our local instructors and helpers All of our participants at the end we welcome them to come back and help if they enjoyed it Or also become an advocate so an advocate may be someone who doesn't have the time to help or Teach a workshop a lot of times faculty, but if they found the workshop useful It's very valuable if they'll share that news and really become an advocate for our software carbon-due program We also offer the helpers the opportunity to become instructors through that software carpentry instructor training program So as a member we get to train 10 new instructors per year through the certification program We try to pick those people strategically so we start with our own library employees who would be well suited to this We also look to it from other departments We just had 19 member from our vice-presidents of research office get certified and he's a really good advocate for our program in that group Graduate students. There are a lot of the times that ones that organize those labs specific Software carpentry workshops. We'll let faculty advocates go through the program if it helps them Tell spread the word and also those partners across campus. We always make sure we save spots for them So this training is not about programming at all It's really pedagogically focused and I know this was mentioned in some earlier Session so it's two full days of learning how to teach technology how to teach and how to teach technology These are normally done remotely. There's a few trained the trainers and software carpentry We're really lucky that our research data specialist Mark Loffice while he was going through that program So we'll be able to have a local trainer in-house. So that'll give us some more flexibility about when we're offering this What's really great after going through this training is you're able to apply these teaching skills to other workshops. We're doing across campus I'll give you a preview of what these workshops look like. So this is day one of most of day one of a software carpentry training workshop There's nothing about technology in here at all So it's mainly educational psychology how memory works. It's really great I had been teaching workshops and hadn't had any of this kind of backing before then it really changed the way I thought About how I gave workshops for a second day, you do get a bit more into Technology and live coding and why we're doing that and also what the software carpentry Community does as a whole So we don't learn any of the curriculum during this There's the assumption that it will change as technology does but the ability to teach technology wall We organize monthly instructor meetups actually one is is happening right now in Norman So this is a place for all of our certified instructors to get together share tips Figure out some logistics. Who is teaching this workshop? Can someone please? And also share brainstorming ideas for other workshop potentials or things related to software carpentry We have a list serve for discussions in between these meetings a lot of that is sharing resources And then something we're piloting is having a list serve for former participants. They do have to opt into this So we're not Spamming anyone but right now we're using it to tell them about events related to software carpentry and also future software carpentries We do have some people we call software carpentry groupies Who come and take the workshops repeatedly a lot of times? They're about to start a project and they realize they need a refresher on version control So they'll come to that morning We also are encouraging our local instructors to participate in this larger software carpentry community It really is a worldwide community There's a very active listserv they can contribute to there's github where all the software carpentry lessons are available and like Carl mentioned They are CC license So a few months ago our instructor group got together at one of our meetings We decided we didn't like the terminology being used in the workshop lessons It was too specific for scientific researchers. So we got together. We wrote up a draft We send it to the main software carpentry site. There was a Discussion among the worldwide community and it got changed. So it's really a community that gives back and it's very open We also encourage our instructors to teach non-local software carpentry workshops like our two library Instructors who went to the Library Congress. This is also really useful for graduate students If they're looking to go to an institution and they've never been there before and they see they're offering the software carpentry workshop It's a great chance for them to go to that institution and actually start networking and meeting some of the people they may be working with And finally, there's lots of committees and discussions within the larger software carpentry community And we really encourage our local instructors to participate in that And so I'm going to cover some of the practical lessons we learned while doing software carpentry The first is to try different scheduling patterns Two days is a lot during the middle of a semester. We've actually had a lot of success doing it in spring break Graduate students aren't normally gone. They don't have classes, but we get Thanksgiving work similarly We're trying a Friday Saturday workshop schedule. We're actually doing it this Friday and Saturday. So ask me on Sunday if that works Also advertised through a variety of means so we do digital signage We try to get on every university wide newsletter. We can We use social media Facebook Twitter where there seems to be a little more successful Email individual faculty members. We know who are interested use our former Participant lists are but still I go across campus and I know called us to and people haven't heard about software carpentry So we're still working on this and just trying every outlet. We can Have plenty of helpers available. I've talked about them a lot This is the number one comment we get on those green sticky notes. How great they are So here's one of those and I don't think the workshops work without helpers I would say they're probably more important than the instructors themselves So a big lesson we've learned is to be prepared for all skill levels We advertise these as begin our workshops. So that means different things to different people Sometimes we'll have people come in for a Python based workshop, but they're advanced our programmers So they intend to get bored during the session. So we offer a disclaimer at the beginning that this is a beginning workshop We also offered the opportunity for those people to become helpers during the sections They're bored it reinforces their own understanding to help someone else on the other end We have people come in who are true beginners more beginner than we expected May have difficulty navigating around their computer. We don't turn those people away But we do situate a helper at that table to be kind of ready assistance Another practical lesson we learned is you have to have the learners come early for installation problems There's a lot of software to install We started advertising the first day of the workshop starts at 830 instead of 9 Some people are mildly irritated that but there's coffee nearby So no matter even if they follow all the instructions there may still be a problem So it's really great to have them early to test it. So you're not in the middle of a workshop and something's not working Also an important lesson we had to learn the hard way is you need experts in both Windows and Mac This is something we got dinged on in our early software carving tree workshops A lot of us are Mac users and so we got a few comments like it seems like no one had any idea about Windows And that was a fair comment So we make sure that we have at least one Windows and one Mac user at every single workshop Try to do it with the instructor sometime. That doesn't work out, but at least helpers And then the final lesson that we've learned is you have to host these workshops in strategic locations So this is our Helmut collaborative learning center classroom And it's got lots of screens flexible seating round tables that work well for a helper at each table We've also hosted the workshop at our innovation hub, which is on the research campus And this is a comment from that workshop. So The organization of furniture and screens made an open learning environment. So the setup is really nice Also important is where these positions are on campus and our library So this Helmut collaborative learning center classroom is right next door to the digital scholarship lab where we hold those office hours So it's really easy to say at the end of the workshop come back on Thursday in that other glass room next door And you can get help for the innovation hub This is on our research campus south campus and it's a lot easier for researchers to come there Just walk across the street where they're normally used to going there's parking and also in the innovation hub There's lots of tools. There's virtual reality. There's Machinery that you can make prototypes with 3d printers laser cutters So it's all better to see while they're at these workshops so they can think of potential uses for those tools With that I'll hand it back over to Carl So, you know, I think I just would underscore what Sarah was saying there and that this really has become a nucleus on our campus To interconnect all the other services we do, you know, the informatics group are our Liaisons and all of our, you know, data management people who can connect them all to these researchers and they get Better embedded and we as the librarian get embedded in what they're doing And that's of course what we've been trying to do for quite a while and I think we're they're being quite successful with that So, you know, we we see this as a really important program I think we've spent a lot of time building the community around the effort in order to sustain it over the long term We don't see it going away We have noticed that the number of people that are coming through the classes is kind of stabilized You know, it's not rowing radically, but it's new people coming through in many cases So we we're teaching more and more and as we help build instructor base and pass them, you know Move them across the countryside We're we're spreading the effort. So we're we're actively trying to expand the program so we're actively training more instructors and We're happy to have them go out across the campus and do do and also means less time commitment from our current Instructors, so they're happy about that We're improving outreach through our community You know Sarah's outlined a number of the steps We've gone through there to make sure that they are also acting as advocates for us and we've gotten a lot of PR You know, we had an article in library journal about this. So, you know, we've seen press there Like we said, we got invited Library of Congress. That was a nice, you know, put our face in front of a lot of important people So it's it's been good for us really good for us And we're starting to think about offering a larger variety of programming languages moving down just Python in order to do this Also remember with the carpentry effort there is a data carpentry Piece that's been spun up and that's looking very promising. We're we're early into that effort We don't really have a lot of experience with it But we feel very good about because we want to teach the researchers how to handle the research data and how to store it So we're doing that and there's also a library carpentry effort starting up So there's enough people in libraries paying attention to this that we've now got a library community Starting up in this. So that's good. I think a very positive sign The other thing we're doing is trying to form more regional Relationships across our geographic area. So we've got a relationship going with Oklahoma State University They also have some certified instructors now and so we we can flip courses with them research bazaar Which Sarah mentioned is a program again another global program where we run that and we invite researchers to come in and we Teach them all kinds of skills not just software carpentry But it's been really very valuable and and I think one of the nice things that we've seen come out of that As a side note is you know, we have a lot of young people working in our innovation at the edge our 3d maker space in microcontroller virtual reality lab and so we've used the research bazaar to have Researchers talk about their projects what they're doing in research to the degree they're willing to expose that And then we have our students come down from the lab And we have a huge volunteer force that works in our innovation at the edge and they talk about the skills They've learned in our innovation at the edge and we're seeing the researchers hire the students for specific tasks But it helps them to get their needs addressed in their research work And it gives these students paying gigs. So they're thrilled But it's been a really nice benefit. It's a you know, it's a direct result of us getting the researchers in there Listening to their needs hearing them say hey, I need somebody to do this Do you know anybody? Well, we're being a little more proactive and trying to deal with that Tell us what your problems are. We have students there and if they feel like they might be able to handle they can talk to Force anything, but we facilitate We're also working with the University of North Texas now So we're going to build a little regional consortium of software carpentry and I think it has all kinds of potential. I know we're all fighting with issues of for instance No funding so, you know, I think these are workshops that ultimately we might be able to expand out and You know, maybe we've run out dorm rooms for a week or something do something longer or set up a whole Program where you could learn a lot of different skills And you know, I see I see an opportunity out there for us to use this to start dealing with some of the funding issues And of course, we're organizing more annual meetups and opportunities for formal workshop attendees. So We're really pleased with the program. We think it's had a lot of a lot of success for the library It really does underscore that Message we put out there where the crossroads come and see us Well, we'll connect you with others that are either working in the same area It's been very satisfying to see the researchers share code And we've got some software. We're working on that will further facilitate that form. So we see a larger initiative In all of this and that, you know, I'm still trying to drive I have talked in the past about the knowledge creation platform, you know as as librarians I get very frustrated with us trying to compete with Google and I keep saying what we need is a massive differentiation to pull them back into the library And so I keep moving us towards a platform where the researchers can log on they can look at research They can reach behind it and get the data that's driving it They can use skills learned and software carpentry to manipulate that data do new research Start a research paper do it in open journal system Publish that paper get a peer-reviewed get it published drop it in the repository Cycle around and do it again. That's not the kind of thing making it Google or Google scholar And that would differentiate us and give us new value in the marketplace I think we're all losing the battle to Google and you know if we're moving towards linked data We're forcing our stuff out there and that's great But once they come back to our discovery systems out of Google What are we going to offer them that makes it different and if it's just linking to the item I don't think we're doing our jobs Look, so I'm trying to build that Infrastructure that moves us towards the knowledge creation platform Which I see is at least in the research library. There's a very important package that we might be able to offer our researchers in the long term Okay, that's that's the end Q&A