Feedback from Edinburgh delivery, 2021-12-08 and 2021-12-09

[ewallace]

Reminder to myself @ewallace to post feedback from 2 workshop deliveries in Edinburgh this last week, to use to improve the lesson.

[ewallace]

FEEDBACK from SynthSys (Edinburgh Biological Sciences) 2021-12-08

This delivery was immediately followed by a half-day git workshop, as a pilot for combining the materials into a larger workshop.

https://pad.carpentries.org/good-practices-git-edinburgh-2021-12-08

Please list 1 thing you liked or found particularly useful

• I really liked the fact that there is written support material we can look over after the session
• very useful examples and simple clear explanations
• Scripting best practices. code blocks etc.
• Stories of real-life examples
• Real examples+ pratical tips
• got some really helpful ideas about tracking data changing and sharing.
• Excellent wrttien document
• Good format of collaborative editting and lecture websites. Very nice advice on the files management!
• Useful information on README files to ensure analysis can be carried out by others at a later date
• get to know the common problems facing by most people in data management (I am not the only one!) and the most important is glad to get to know how to improve in the future
• course material really useful
• I found the data organization (file naming system) very useful.
• I really like personal examples, they are very useful

Please list another think you found less useful, or that could be improved

• more audience engagement
• maybe including a real exercice of coding or creating a databhelpful
• more introduction on the license and copyright things
• Would be useful to include more time for discussions
• maybe include a list of 'principles for good computing practice'
• more code examples
• could be helpful include more practical examples/ exercises
• I feel that a solution to the 'it doesn't work on my computer problem' wasn't given. Obviously this is a complicated problem and there are different solutions depending on project, programming language, needs etc. But maybe walking through some examples. e.g. VMs, Docker, Virtual environments. With examples of when which is a appropriate.
• More practical examples will be much more helpful
• I was a little distructed by many screens in the room (hard to keep attention)

FEEDBACK from EASTBIO students (Scottish biology PhD program) 2021-12-09

https://pad.carpentries.org/EASTBIO-good-enough-practices-2021-12-09

Please list 1 thing you liked or found particularly useful

• This lesson has reminded me that I need to create a data management plan
• Agree, I need to make a consistent and readable file name structure.
• I learnt not to name my files ''final'' which I usually do and found confusing later on (same as in the meme)
• This lesson showed me the variety of ways in which I can manage my data and gave me ideas on what I needed to organize in my lab--overall very useful.
• I liked hearing about actual examples of where data management had gone wrong/the need for a good system
• Gave me motivation to backup everything!
• I enjoyed using the collaborative document, it kept the session interactive, which is really difficult when everyone spends there lives on Zoom/Teams nowadays!
• I enjoyed the shared document and discussions; the sections were clear and broad ranging+
• I have new ways to think about and store data
• I think the shared document was a really good idea, could share ideas without judgement etc
• Friendly and fun way to approach a huge topic so very useful skills learned like doi that I wasn't aware of before
• Very enjoyable liked the collaborative document, nice approachable teachers
• Really nice session with approachable and easy to understand key content. Really nice to know the material is accessible at any time afterwards.

Please list another thing you found less useful, or that could be improved

• I liked the collaborative document more than the breakout rooms ++
• Would be useful to know beforehand that there is an interactive element as everyone in my group couldn't speak so we all had to type
• I had computer issues so struggled with the breakout rooms
• Could have cut some of the intro because the later content got more into specifics that gave more ideas of things to apply
• It was slightly difficult to go between Zoom shared screen, breakout rooms, and the collaborative document on a laptop only setup (without a second screen) (same!)
• People without coding knowledge might not know what GitHub is++++
• It would have been good to get through all the content, but there is a lot to cover
• I would also liked to have focused more on later content than the earlier introduction
• Maybe breakout rooms weren't necessary since we could share ideas on the shared document anyway
• A walk through/tutorial of how to use a data storage tool would have been useful to have a practice+