Next Round of Online Training Opens for Carpentry Instructors

In March 2018 the African Task Force offered a 6-week online training course featuring the Data Carpentry Ecology Workshop. The online training was open to anyone who had participated in Carpentries instructor training in South Africa and the aim was to help our newly trained instructors build confidence with the tools and teaching methodologies of the Carpentries to empower them to deliver this workshop at their institutions.

We had four participants respectively based at University of Fort Hare, North West University - Mafikeng Campus and Addis Ababa Institute of Technology. Although the technology and internet connection provided some challenges from time to time, the general feedback from the participants were very positive. Only one of the participants was a qualified instructor at the time of the online workshop, while three were not qualified and had not taught a workshop before. Since participating in the online training two of our participants had qualified as instructors and both of them had taught at at least one workshop. The third participant is set on completing the instructor checkout process by early next year.

In July 2018 Erika Mias,presented our lessons learned on behalf of the African Task Force at the E/Merge Africa Festival of eLearning. The title of the presentation was “Pioneering online lesson supplement for carpentries instructor training: Increasing Instructor Participation and Certification Numbers in Africa”. The presentation will be made available shortly.

Based on the success of the first round of online training, we will run another iteration of the Data Carpentry Ecology Workshop from 16 October 2018. The event will again be open to anyone who have participated in Carpentries instructor training in Africa and who wants to become an active Carpentries instructor.

More information is available at the workshop website.