Instructor Training

University of Toronto Libraries

July 18-19, 2019

9:00 am - 4:30 pm

Instructors: Greg Wilson, Cam Macdonell

Helpers:

General Information

The course is aimed at everyone who is interested in becoming a better teacher. In particular, this training is aimed at those who want to become Software Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Data Carpentry Instructors, run workshops and contribute to The Carpentries training materials. You don't currently have to be an instructor or a teacher to attend this workshop, but you do need to be willing and committed to becoming one and to improving your teaching techniques.

Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and Library Carpentry's mission is to help scientists, researchers, and librarians get more research done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic lab skills for scientific computing. This hands-on two-day workshop covers the basics of educational psychology and instructional design, and looks at how to use these ideas in both intensive workshops and regular classes.

The workshop is a mix of lectures and hands-on lessons where you practice giving a short lesson using approaches learned and implement some of the teaching techniques which we will discuss. This is training for teaching, not technical training; you do not need any particular technical background, and we will not be teaching that. This workshop is based on the constantly revised and updated curriculum.

Where

University of Toronto Libraries

Room 538, Faculty of Information, 140 St. George Street. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.

Accessibility

We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. The workshop organisers have checked that:

Further details: The accessible entrance into the Faculty of Information building (140 St. George Street) is via the wheelchair ramp on the northwest side of the building, by Sussex Ave. There are washrooms on each floor. An accessible gender-neutral washroom is located on Level 4, and additional accessible men’s and women’s washrooms are located on Level 1 of the building.

Materials will be provided in advance of the workshop and large-print handouts are available if needed by notifying the organizers in advance. If we can help making learning easier for you (e.g. sign-language interpreters, lactation facilities) please please get in touch (using contact details below) and we will attempt to provide them.

Requirements

Participants should bring a laptop that is Internet connected and has a functioning browser. If you have it, a device for recording audio and video (mobile phones and laptops are OK) is useful as throughout the two days, we are going to record one another teaching in pairs or threes. It does not have to be high-quality, but it should be good enough that you can understand what someone is saying.

Please note that after this course is over, you will be asked to do three short follow-up exercises online in order to finish qualifying as an instructor: the details are available at https://carpentries.github.io/instructor-training/checkout/. If you have any questions about the workshop, the reading material, or anything else, please get in touch.

Code of Conduct

All participants are required to abide by The Carpentries Code of Conduct.

Contact

Please email ms.chan@utoronto.ca for more information.


Preparation

Please read the following before the workshop begins:

  1. The Science of Learning

Please also read through one episode of one of The Carpentries lessons below carefully, so that you can do some exercises based on it on the first day of the class. An episode is one page of a lesson.


Training Materials and Schedule

Please see this site for course material and tentative schedule.



Etherpad: https://pad.carpentries.org/2019-07-18-ttt-UTL.
We will use this Etherpad for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.

Surveys

Before attending the workshop, please fill out our pre-training survey.

After the workshop, please fill out our post-assessment survey.