RCCPII and Task Force Pioneer New Mentorship Programme to Boost Instructors' Confidence and Competence

Although we have a large number of trained instructors in South Africa, it was found that less than 50% of trained instructors complete their certification and become active in the community. Carpentry instructor training currently consists of a four-step process:

• participate in a 2-3-day workshop in person or online;
• contribute to the suite of collaboratively developed lesssons;
• participate in an online discussion session (to meet other community members from all over the world); and
• do a 5-minute online teaching demo.

Although most people enjoy the instructor training and indicate that they find it useful, there are still barriers to completing the next steps of the qualification process. In some cases it was found that trained instructors may not be very familiar with some of the tools taught as part of the Carpentries repertoire (including Shell, R, Python, OpenRefine, SQL and git/Github). In other cases trained (and often qualified instructors) did not feel confident enough to teach the materials even if they were using the tools in their work.

The African Carpentries Task force, with support from the RCCPII Capacity Development Initiative, are planning numerous events to help build our instructors’ confidence and competence over the next 12 months. The first activity that commenced on 20 March this year involves a six-week online training and mentoring programme for trained (but not necessarily qualified) instructors. The programme covers one of the most popular workshops in the Carpentries’ suite of workshops (the Data Carpentry Ecology Workshop) and systematically works through the lessons over six weeks’ of 1.5 hour online meetings. The meetings are run on the Vidyo platform which is supported by TENET.

The first two sessions ran successfully earlier in March and included participants from University of Fort Hare, North-West University, and Addis Ababa University. To optimise mentorship opportunities and enhance the experience of each individual participant, these sessions have been limited to a maximum of five particpants in the first round. Our instructors all serve on the African Carpentry Task Force and include Katrin Tirok (University of KwaZulu Natal), Kayleigh Lino (University of Cape Town), and Anelda van der Walt (RCCPII). Erika Mias (Talarify) and Wesley Adriaanse (TENET) has played a major role in the success of the programme by providing logistical and administrative support to both learners and instructors. Feedback from our participants has been very positive to date.