05-support.Rmd

# Support Structures

There are many ways to build long-term support for your community of practice
into the social fabric of your institution. When the story gets around your
campus or organization that there is a community that can help with
computational skills, you may be asked how you can support more people. To do so
may present an opportunity to translate your community from an informal
collection of colleagues into a more formalized support structure at your
organization. This chapter lays out stories and ideas about how to approach, or
even create various support structures within your organization that can
continue to support these efforts.

### Collecting evidence

To win funding support, evidence of efficacy is generally required. For every
Hacky Hour attendee, the [UQ Hacky Hour
team](https://hackyhourstluc.wordpress.com/) note the name, school or institute,
problem to be solved, and whether this was an attendee's first visit or if it
was a repeat visit. (People often come week after week until they reach a final
resolution of a problem.) Details of helpers are noted as well. This information
is then reorded in a spreadhsheet so that the scope of advice sought and the
help provided can easily be demonstrated as evidence that a need for this kind
of advice and support exists. The growing numbers demonstrate that the service
will soon be overwhelmed by the demand, and that more formal support is
required.


## Schools/Deans

If you're in a university environment, it can be useful to look around for
various incentive grant programs at the dean or school level. These programs can
come under different names, but they often support innovative ideas and
initiatives that can become the seeds for more substantial change. These can be
useful for running workshops, helping to coordinate a local community of
instructors, or other activiites requiring resources. It is good to think of
these funds as catalyzing funds which can be a springboard to a more sustainable
program for supporting your initiative locally.

Department chairs, deans, and associate deans all walk the halls trying to hear
what the challenges and opportunities are among the researchers at their
institution. With the growth of data driven research and digital research
skills, training is a frequent topic of conversation among research faculty and
their administrative leadership. Finding ways in to this kind of conversation
and deomonstrating a light-weight low-cost culture of peer-to-peer teaching that
can be built into the fabric of the intitution is a win-win-win for many of
these leaders. Each instituion and organisation is different, but finding ways
that you can tie-in to conversations already taking place and bring forward
answers to persistent and expensive problems is a great way to get traction on
your campus.

## Library

Academic and research libraries have a long track-record of delivering skills
workshops to their communities. With a consistent vision for peer-to-peer
teaching, libraries can be a key ally to greater impact. Libraries sit at the
intellectual crossorads of most research institutions, and librarians are
service orientated in their outlook. They appreciate models which can empower
researchers and help connect the relevence of the library and its staff into the
intitutional and research fabric. Whether it is through Library Carpentry (to
upskill library staff) or Data/Software Carpentry (to upskill researchers), many
reasearch libraries are well aligned with this peer teaching and capacity
building model of The Carpentries. Talking to a Data Management librarian, or
subject librarians in key areas of funded research programs at your instituion
can be a very fruitful discussion which can connect you to other conversations
and build long-term support and good will for your efforts.

## Research IT

Research IT organisations invest large amounts of money into hardware platforms
and the people who support them. They're seen in some disciplines as key
partners in any research activity or inititaive. At the same time many Research
IT organisations have been less than welcoming in how they invite new research
areas onto existing infrastruture and systems. Much Research IT infrastructure
is complicated and takes intentional consideration to understand before a
particular research objective can be codifed into code which runs on the
systems. Workshops like The Carpentries can act as a useful bridge to these
organisations as they're being asked by administrators and funders to serve a
more diverse population which represents all of the diversity of the insitution
they operate within. By serving as a tried-and-trusted community of practice
with well respected lessons, it is possible to get support from your Research IT
organisation to bring more workshops to your campus. Mapping these workshops to
the workshops your Research IT team already teach can help you to tie-in your
work to broaden participation.

## Professional Societies

Many professional societies see as part of their mandate the need to act as a
light-house or beacon to their community around the skills necessary to do the
work in that discipline in the coming era. Many disciplines today look
fundamentally different in terms of research practices than they did even ten
years ago. From the sequence biology data explosion to collaborative astronomy
platforms and experiments, the nature of how work is done in disciplines is ever
changing. By tying your work into professional societies you care about, you can
help become a leader in identifying skills area needing support and bringing new
interventions (workshops, summer institutes, conferences) into existence that
will support your community. Carpentries workshops and lesson development can be
key areas to build-in to professional societies to ensure long-term support from
the international bodies supporting your discipline.


## Innovation/Maker Spaces

Many campuses have been building maker spaces and innovation spaces to encourage
tinkering, entreprenuership and innovation. These spaces, in addition to being
fun places to host workshops, can be allies in your work to spread and
democratize digital research skills on your campus. Finding ways that your
workshops can tie-in to inititaives and activites at these spaces, can help to
broaden support for your activities beyond just research applications. Digital
skills lie at the heart of digital innovation spaces.

## Outside Supporters

### Carpentries Membership

# Funding Workshops

There are several potential sources of funding available for workshops, whether
these be at an institution, or run as some kind of event tie-in, say, at a
conference within a specific discipline.

## Where to start with your own institution

There are several potential sources of workshop funding within your own
institution:

- individual schools, departments, or research centers, especially within those
disciplines where computational and data skills are needed, but are currently
lacking, e.g. in humanities, linguistics, social sciences
- research committees
- research-related units, e.g. research office, graduate schools, postgraduate
student recruitment, as they may be interested in supporting training
- student associations, e.g. postgraduate student societies or
discipline-specific student associations, e.g.
[COMBINE](https://combine.org.au/)
- computing societies of all kinds on campus
- e-research computing or digital scholarship units, if they exist at your
institution
- libraries

All of the above may be willing to provide funding for a first workshop if you
make a good case for it. Use some of the materials in
[this repository](https://github.com/carpentries/commons) to make your case.

## Outside your institution

1. Conferences may be good places to try to obtain funding for a workshop. The
conference organisers may be willing to manage logistics for the workshop, such
as finding a venue, sourcing instructors, and handling registration in return
for a workshop sign-up fee that goes to them.

2. Industry is another source of funding. Companies such as Amazon and Microsoft
may be willing to fund a workshop as that may drive customers to their cloud
solutions. If you are running a workshop targeted at a specific discipline, then
try to find a local industry partner who might be willing to put up a little
money to fund it as long as they can display their logo or banner at the event
and on any advertising, or address the assembled workshop participants either
within the workshop or over a sponsored lunch or coffee break.

3. National infrastructure related to e-research support or supercomputing might
also be useful places to try.

## Can you run a workshop *without* funding?

You can! The simplest way to do that is to charge a fee to attendees to cover
the costs of organising the workshop. This need not be much but charging has
several benefits:

- people who register for a fee are more likely to attend and stay for the whole
workshop
- fees may allow you to provide catering which is always popular and helps with
keeping people at the workshop
- registration fees allow you to cover any costs incurred, such as room hire,
instructor travel, the
purchase of workshop necessities such as sticky notes,
whiteboard markers, extension cables and power boards (and possibly wifi/wifi
  boosters)
- any money not spent can be saved to help fund later workshops

If you can find a suitable room on campus that can seat 20 or more people at
tables, that has good wifi, and is accessible, then you can run your workshop
for little to no money at all.

This [post from the Software Carpentry
blog](https://software-carpentry.org/blog/2018/04/workshops-limited-budget.html)
lists a few strategies for running workshops with limited or no funding.

# How to Scale up The Carpentries

In October of 2018, community member Lex Nederbragt brought forward a discussion
happening at his home institution (University of Oslo) about how to scale up
Carpentry teaching to have more impact on campus. Lex posed a series of
questions to the community and a rich discussion was had, summarized below.

[Lex Nederbragt wrote:
](https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tad9e416c2ec4742e/how-can-we-scale-up-carpentries-training-at-universities)
> By making Carpentry workshops a core offering across departments, with
> students able to earn credit from them, my fear is that the spirit of the
> volunteer effort gets lost or may become reduced. Making our workshops into
> required courses may change (reduce) the motivation for learners and
> instructors. So here are my questions to you: >*  Have other universities made
> the same move, or are they planning this, and if so, how are they organizing
> this effort? >* How to keep learners motivated if they feel they are required
> to take a Carpentries workshops? >* How to keep the quality of instruction,
> and instructor motivation, high, if workshops become organized like regular
> courses?


## Discussion overview

[Giacomo
Peru](https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tad9e416c2ec4742e-M7129de063f2d223de11c9f15/how-can-we-scale-up-carpentries-training-at-universities)
points out that to be succesful The Carpentries need not run afoul of existing
strucutures. They need to find ways to be harmoniously in existence within the
ecosystem in which they operate.

[Stephanie
Labou](https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tad9e416c2ec4742e-M2ebe0f78acab0ce249fc18f2/how-can-we-scale-up-carpentries-training-at-universities)
writes that the Unviersity of California Sand Diego is considering workshops for
inclusion in a co-curricular record (CCR), a detailed enumeration of the
professional development activities someone has undertaken outside of formal
curricula without associated red-tape around assigning credit.

[Peter
Hoyt](https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tad9e416c2ec4742e-Mf583f6c2e939923bcb68b4b3/how-can-we-scale-up-carpentries-training-at-universities)
acknowledges that Universities would like to be in the value stream of skills
training and thus charge for workshops and the learning taking place at them.
Peter suggests, moving to a flipped model with more teaching done online.

[April
Wright](https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tad9e416c2ec4742e-M0223a648d868c59f6cfeea05/how-can-we-scale-up-carpentries-training-at-universities)
suggest having different sections and thus expecations as part of the same
course. Combining lecture and hands on activities, but expecting more of those
who take the course and expect credit. April also talks about instructor
motivation and some ways to keep the instructor expeirence fresh for
instructors.

[Simon
Waldman](https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tad9e416c2ec4742e-M1f39cde2b163166912413882/how-can-we-scale-up-carpentries-training-at-universities)
notes that as workshops scale up, that it might be necessary to make workshop
instruction part of people's paid jobs.

[Sarah
Brown](https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tad9e416c2ec4742e-Ma36b00d5ab62bada8cc4d068/how-can-we-scale-up-carpentries-training-at-universities)
mentioned how Mathworks (makers of MATLAB) would fund a TA position for an
expert in MATLAB in courses requiring MATLAB.

[Hao
Ye](https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tad9e416c2ec4742e-M7046a25f5d342a2837f478bc/how-can-we-scale-up-carpentries-training-at-universities)
points out that much of relevant R and Python training is taught by adjuncts and
full-time faculty seldom teach these kinds of workshops. To value these skills,
Hao suggests that faculty teach these skills more.

[David
Bapst](https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tad9e416c2ec4742e-M7c543979d513a32bf16fe69e/how-can-we-scale-up-carpentries-training-at-universities)
points out that short-form workshops and long-form semester type courses feed
different niches and there is a place for both of them in the institution. David
warns against thinking of one or the other, and thinking about ways both
structures can thrive and feed into each other.

[Sebastian
Schmeier](https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tad9e416c2ec4742e-M55f7c513037d656998cda099/how-can-we-scale-up-carpentries-training-at-universities)
talks about how the support structures inside semester courses are sometimes not
as condicive to using Carpentry teaching practices. Sebastian addressed this by
spreading the load and asking more senior students to come in 1-2 times per
semester to help out. This worked, but the culture at Massey is such that this
could only be supported for so long.

## Scaling Up Summary and Considerations

It is clear from the communnity feedback that there is a place for short-form
workshops and short-form workshops afford certain leeways and teaching practices
that aren't neceessarily able to be duplicated in semester courses. It is also
clear that attendence to these workshops as a demonstration of a researcher's
continuing education and professional development are seen as important. As you
seek to navigate your own institutions or network of instututions, this thread
provides a rich trove of areas to consider as you bring forth a program that
works well for your community.

* Short form [workshops are different](http://carpentries.org/workshops) in
content and pedagogy than most semester courses.
* 2-days or less is an important length of time to both be impactful, but not
overwhelming
* Reflecting Carpentry teaching practices into semester courses is a good thing,
and is a sign of maturity in your community.
* Having instructors share common teaching materials (our community lessons) is
an important distinction of workshop teaching.
* Finding ways for learners and instructors to receive credit for their
participation in workshops is important.
* Searching for and finding a niche for Carpentry workshops that is productive
and helpful to your community needs to be done in a considered and careful
manner.