Welcome

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

• What can I expect from this course?

• How will the course work and how will I get help?

• How can I give feedback to improve the course?

Objectives

• Understand how this course works, how I can get help and how I can give feedback.

Course structure and method

Rather than having separate lectures and practical sessions, this course is taught following The Carpentries methodology where we all work together through material learning key skills and information throughout the course. Typically, this follows the method of the instructor demonstrating and then the attendees doing along with the instructor.

There are many helpers available to assist you and to answer any questions you may have as we work through the material together. You should also feel free to ask questions of the instructor whenever you like. The instructor will also provide many opportunities to pause and ask questions.

We will also make use of a shared collaborative document - the etherpad. You will find a link to this collaborative document on the course page. We will use it for a number of different purposes, for example, it may be used during exercises and instructors and helpers may put useful information or links in the etherpad that help or expand on the material being taught. If you have useful information to share with the class then please do add it to the etherpad. At the end of the course, we take a copy of the information in the etherpad, remove any personally-identifiable information and post this on the course archive page so you should always be able to come back and find any information you found useful.

Feedback

Feedback is integral to how we approach training both during and after the course. In particular, we use informal and structured feedback activities during the course to ensure we tailor the pace and content appropriately for the attendees and feedback after the course to help us improve our training for the future.

You will be issued with red and green “stickies” (or shown how to use their virtual equivalent for online courses) to allow you give the instructor and helpers quick visual feedback on how you are getting on with the pace and the content of the course. If you are comfortable with the pace/content then you should place your green sticky on the back of your laptop; if you are stuck, have questions, or are struggling with the pace/content then you should place the red sticky on the back of your laptop and a helper will come and speak to you. The instructor may also ask you to use the stickies in other, specific situations.

At the lunch break (and end of days for multi-day courses) we will also run a quick feedback activity to gauge how the course is matching onto attendees requirements. Instructors and helpers will review this feedback over lunch (or overnight) and provide a summary of what we found at the start of the next session and, potentially, how the upcoming materiel/schedule will be changed to address the feedback.

Finally, you will be provided with the opportunity to provide feedback on the course after it has finished. We welcome all this feedback, both good and bad, as this information in key to allow us to continually improve the training we offer.

Key Points

• We should all understand and follow the ARCHER2 Code of Conduct to ensure this course is conducted in the best teaching environment.

• The course will be flexible to best meet the learning needs of the attendees.

• Feedback is an essential part of our training to allow us to continue to improve and make sure the course is as useful as possible to attendees.