New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) is pleased to announce the offering of a Software Carpentry Instructor Training workshop at the University of Auckland, 28-29 January 2016 and would like to invite candidates from Te Pūnaha Matatini. This workshop kicks off our 2016 training programme, which is quickly followed by Research Bazaar 2016 (ResBaz), and presentations by key international training leaders at eResearch NZ 2016.
Software Carpentry is an international initiative to upskill researchers, in research computing skills to help them be more productive. It is usually delivered in the form of a two-day highly-interactive workshop, and has seen great successes worldwide.
NeSI, the national leader in High Performance Computing, is an official affiliate of Software Carpentry Foundation, and in partnership with several institutions across the sector we have delivered a series of Software Carpentry workshops nationwide during 2015. We are seeing great demand for research computing training in New Zealand’s research community, with many events sold out within a few days.
We are fortunate to have Aleksandra Pawlik from Software Sustainability Institute, UK, here to run a *two-day* intensive workshop to train and certify new instructors. This workshop will cover the basics of educational psychology and instructional design, and look at how to use these ideas to create an effective learning experience.
New certified instructors from your institution will then be authorised to offer Software Carpentry workshops to the local research community on a regular basis, and NeSI will continue to support and sponsor future training offerings at your institution (our sponsorship in the main comes from our membership, which covers the administrative fee otherwise payable to the Foundation).
The Instructor Training workshop is limited to 20 participants. We ask for at most two candidates per institution for the selection process. We expect to confirm selected candidates, and inform them, before the new year.
There are number of considerations to keep in mind when choosing candidates for this workshop:
- A technical/academic staff member or a Ph.D student who is technically capable and experienced in scientific computing will be an ideal candidate.
- Once candidates have been nominated, we will direct them to complete a brief online pre-selection survey which will allow us to select the final group of 20.
If selected, attendees are required to complete a number of tasks prior to attending the Instructor Training workshop.
- Newly trained Instructors must commit to running/teaching at 2 workshops within 8 months upon completing instructor training, with the first workshop within 3 months.
These requirements are in place so together we can build an effective team of local Instructors committed to putting their skills into practice.
Nominate candidates by emailing georgina.rae@nesi.org.nz with “Call for nominations for Software Carpentry Instructor Training” in the subject line before Wednesday December 16th – include the names and contact emails for your candidates.