Collaborative Lesson Development Training for RSEs

Abstract

The Carpentries is a community building global capacity in essential data and computational skills for conducting efficient, open, and reproducible research. In addition to certified Instructors teaching Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry workshops around the world, the community also includes many people contributing to and maintaining Open Source lessons.

Recent years have seen enormous growth in the number and diversity of lessons the community is creating, including many teaching skills and concepts essential to Research Software Engineering: software packaging and publication, environment and workflow management, containerised computing, etc. As this curriculum community has developed, demand has been growing for training opportunities, teaching how to design and develop Open Source curriculum effectively and in collaboration with others.

A new program launched in 2023, The Carpentries Collaborative Lesson Development Training teaches good practices in lesson design and development, and open source collaboration skills, using The Carpentries Workbench, an Open Source infrastructure for building accessible lesson websites.

As the discipline of Research Software Engineering continues to develop and mature, there is an increasing need for high-quality, Open Source and community-maintained training, and for the expertise to develop those resources. This poster will provide an overview of the training, explain how it meets this need, and describe how it fits into The Carpentries ecosystem for lesson development. It will also explain how RSEs can enroll in the training, and give examples of lesson projects that have benefited from it already.