2023-ISC-lightning_WS-challenges.md

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CodeRefinery Workshops:

Challenges in reverse hybrid teaching

CodeRefinery flashtalk in BoF at ISC

Matias Jääskeläinen (CSC – IT Center for Science)

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CodeRefinery workshop: Reverse hybrid

Next workshop: Sep, 2023

• 6 half-days, twice per year
• Online, free, live-streamed, recorded
• Asynchronous Q&A in collaborative document
• Version control, Collaborative coding, Reproducible research ...

Lessons in CodeRefinery.org and Recordings in YouTube

.cite[(c) Samantha Wittke]

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CodeRefinery workshop: Why Reverse hybrid

• Issue with hybrid:

  • People onsite ≠ people online.

• Large courses:

  • Most students don't have time to ask a question f2f
  • They online chat with the teacher anyway

• Reverse hybrid:

  • Teachers via video and online chat
  • Students in onsite groups
  • Those who want interaction can get it
  • The course isn't bound to one location, anyone can attend.

• It is actually scaling up!

• First challenge: Explain how to join :D

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Scaling up – Technical side

R. Darst's streaming setup during "Python for Scientific Computing".

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Scaling up – Technical side

• Many moving parts:

  • Screenshare material and terminal / Jupyter
  • Zoom + OBS: audio and video in both (mute, on/off…)
  • Sound levels have to be checked with every speaker
  • Different scenes to screensharing, discussion, breaks…

• New bottlenecks:

  • What we worry the most: The Q&A document

    • We get up to 40 questions per hour
    • Collaborative document might crash
    • User errors: someone selects all and delete…
    • Needs a few people to moderate

  • More people -> more technical problems -> overhead in solving them

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Scaling up – Arrangements

.center[ ]

.cite[(c) Samantha Wittke]

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Scaling up – Challenges

• Preparation and afterwork

  • Coordination effort > lesson preparation and teaching
  • We removed Zoom teams
  • Volunteer retention and building lasting relationships takes effort

• More people:

  • Level of teaching:
    • No common prerequisite level
    • Take the novices into account -> Again a basic course
  • Meeting expectations:
    • Walkthrouhgs vs. proper problem-solving exercises

• Remote people:

  • How to ensure a common understanding about the topic
  • How to know how people are doing?
    • We don't see them, but the Q&A document
  • Certificates: how do we assess what people have been done?

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License and credit: CC-BY

Collaborators and inspiration

• Radovan Bast (project manager – and whatever that might require)
• Richard Darst (design of the current workshop streaming format, developed many novel teaching techniques that we use)
• Samantha Wittke (graphics explaining the concepts, developed workshop on-boarding scheme)
• Matias Jääskeläinen (workshop coordination)
• CodeRefinery team (teaching, materials, everything)
• Aalto RSE group
• Nordic-RSE

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Collaboration options

• Use material, give feedback
• Join workshop as learner, observer or co-organiser

News, support, and social media

• Chat: https://coderefinery.zulipchat.com
• Blog: https://coderefinery.org/blog/
• Newsletter: https://tinyletter.com/coderefinery
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@coderefinery3414
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/coderefine
• Mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@coderefinery
• Support: support@coderefinery.org