Teaching and Hosting

Certified instructors can view opportunities to teach Carpentries workshops in AMY. Join the instructors mailing list to be notified when new opportunities are posted.

Certified instructors are also encouraged to run workshops themselves. When organising a workshop, you have two options: a Centrally-Organised or Self-Organised workshop.

One way to understand the distinction between Centrally-Organised and Self-Organised workshops is who is responsible for certain key workshop components:

Centrally-Organised Workshop

• registration managed by The Carpentries Workshop Administration Team

• instructor recruitment managed by The Carpentries Workshop Administration Team

Self-Organised Workshop

• registration managed by local organizer

• instructor recruitment managed by local organizer

Note

Recruitment of Instructors for Self-Organised workshops

While Self-Organised workshops are not managed by The Carpentries Workshop Administration Team, we want to be able to provide you with resources to make the load lighter. When hosting a Carpentries workshop there are many steps in the coordination process. One of the most important components is ensuring you have Instructors to teach your workshop. This can be even more difficult when you have to recruit the instructors for a Self-Organised workshop.

The Workshop Administration Team has seen an increase in both Self-Organised workshops and Centrally-Organised workshops. With this increase, we have also seen a decrease in the amount of available instructors to teach Centrally-Organised workshops. As an organisation, we need to ensure that we are able to provide Instructors for our paid workshops while also providing resources for Self-Organised workshops.

To ensure the Instructor community is not oversaturated with request to teach, the Workshop Administration Team has identified specific places for recruiting Instructors, Supporting Instructors and/or helpers for a Self-Organised workshop. Below are the channels you can use:

• Any local or group specific mailing list on TopicBox

• Any local or group specific Slack channel

These channels were designed specifically for community members to communicate about specific needs and to build local capacity. Recruiting done in any other channel will be removed.

In both cases, the host site is expected to pay for instructor travel (if needed) and cover local costs. For a Centrally-Organised workshop, there is a fee if the organiser is not already a Carpentries member.

Note that you are free to charge what you choose for a workshop; this is a perennial topic of discussion among the Carpentries community and there’s a good summary of points here: Carpentries Blog on Charging for Workshops.

In both cases (self- or Centrally-Organised), you can start the workshop process by completing the Carpentries workshop request form and then proceeding through the relevant checklists and list of tips below.

For Centrally-Organised workshops, the Regional Coordinator will guide the host and instructor(s) on following through on all these steps. A global team of Regional Coordinators support workshop activity and community building in regions around the world. Read more about who they are and what they do.

For Self-Organised workshops, the host and instructor are directly responsible for ensuring all the steps below are followed without support from the Regional Coordinator. If you are planning to self-organise a workshop, check out these Tips for Organising Your First Carpentries Workshop.

• Workshop Checklists
  • Host Checklist
  • Billing Guidelines
  • Instructor Checklist
  • Helper Checklist
  • Email Templates
• Tips For Instructors
  • Handling Software Installation
  • Talking About the Code of Conduct
  • Using Exercises
  • General Tips
  • Preparing to Teach
• Teaching Non-standard Carpentries Workshops
• Workshop Needs
  • Venue
  • Equipment and Materials
  • Accessibility
• Handling Emergencies
• Learner Certificates

Resources for Online Workshops

In the wake of COVID-19 in early 2020, The Carpentries community came together to share experiences, tips, and best practices for teaching online. This page lists all the resources developed and links to ongoing conversations by The Carpentries Core Team and community on different platforms.

• Resources for Online Workshops
  • Resources by The Carpentries
  • Resources by Community
  • Discussions in Carpentries Socials

Publishing Workshops

Workshops are published to The Carpentries website and the appropriate lesson program sites (Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, or Software Carpentry) when all of the following criteria are met:

• A workshop request or notification form has been submitted

• The workshop request form gives permission to list the workshop on our websites

• The workshop venue has been identified on the workshop website

• At least one instructor is identified