Instructor Training

Over the last hundred years, researchers have discovered an enormous amount about how people learn and how best to teach them. Unfortunately, much of that knowledge has not yet been translated into common classroom practice, especially at the university level.

This two-day class has the following overall goals:

Introduce you to evidence-based best-practices of teaching.
Teach you how to create a positive environment for learners at your workshops.
Provide opportunities for you to practice and build your teaching skills.
Help you become integrated into the Carpentries community.
Prepare you to use these teaching skills in teaching Carpentries workshops.

Because we have only two days, some things are beyond the scope of this class. We will not be learning:

How to program in R or Python, use Git or SQL, or any of the other topics taught in Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, or Library Carpentry workshops.
How to create your own lessons from scratch (although you will have a good start on the principles behind that sort of work if you’re inspired to learn more).

Please fill in the online application form if you wish to take part in this course. Priority is given to members of our partner organizations, but we run several open-enrollment classes each year as well.

The class will be hands-on throughout: short lessons will alternate with individual and group practical exercises, including practice teaching sessions. Those who complete the two full days and some short follow-up exercises online will be certified to teach Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and Library Carpentry workshops.

All participants in this course are required to abide by our Code of Conduct.
There are no specific prerequisites for this training, but participants will benefit from having attended a Data Carpentry or Software Carpentry workshop either as learner or helper so that they are familiar with our teaching techniques and the style of our workshops.
In particular, participants are not required to have any specific programming skills (though of course they should know enough about the subjects of one or more of our lessons to be able to teach them).

Feedback on these materials is welcome as an issue on the Github repository that hosts this site.

These materials are freely available under a Creative Commons license.

Sample Schedule

		Setup	Download files required for the lesson
		Pre-training survey	Please fill out our pre-training survey before the start of the course.
Day 1	09:00	Welcome	Who are we and how do we approach teaching? What should you expect from this workshop?
	09:15	Building Skill With Practice	How do people learn? Who is a typical Carpentries learner? How can we help novices become competent practitioners?
	10:20	Expertise and Instruction	What type of instructor is best for novices? How are we (as instructors) different from our learners and how does this impact our teaching?
	11:10	Morning Break	Break
	11:25	Memory and Cognitive Load	What is cognitive load and how does it affect learning? How can we design instruction to work with, rather than against, memory constraints?
	12:10	Building Skill With Feedback	How can I get feedback from learners? How can I use this feedback to improve my teaching?
	12:30	Lunch	Break
	13:30	Motivation and Demotivation	Why is motivation important? How can we create a motivating environment for learners?
	14:35	Mindset	How does mindset influence learning? How should we praise our learners? How should we talk about errors? What are successful habits of lifelong learners?
	15:15	Afternoon Break	Break
	15:30	Teaching is a Skill	How can I improve my teaching?
	16:40	Wrap-Up and Homework for Tomorrow	What have we learned today? What needs to be done to prepare for tomorrow?
	17:00	Finish
Day 2	09:00	Welcome Back	What have we learned so far? What will we focus on today?
	09:10	Live Coding is a Skill	Why do we teach programming using participatory live coding?
	10:20	Preparing to Teach	How should I prepare to teach?
	11:10	Morning Break	Break
	11:25	More Practice Live Coding	How did you change your teaching in response to feedback?
	12:10	Managing a Diverse Classroom	How can I prepare for effective co-teaching? What are the challenges of managing a heterogeneous classroom? What do I do if there is a Code of Conduct violation?
	12:30	Lunch	Break
	13:30	Checkout Process	What do I need to do to finish certifying as a Carpentries instructor?
	13:45	The Carpentries: How We Operate	How is The Carpentries organized and run? What is the difference between SWC, DC, and LC workshops?
	15:00	Afternoon Break	Break
	15:15	Workshop Introductions	How do you actually start a workshop?
	15:55	Putting It Together	How are the teaching practices we’ve learned used in our workshops?
	16:15	Wrapping Up	Provide final feedback to your instructors.
	16:30	Post-training survey	Please fill out our pre-training survey before the start of the course.
	16:45	Finish

The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.