Beta-testing the R novice materials

by Scott Ritchie

Last week we ran our first ever full-scale Software Carpentry Bootcamp offering R instead of Python. This proved to be an immensely popular workshop: we had to move to a lecture theatre double the original planned size as placed filled up in less than 6 hours! 

Earlier this year in September we had run an alpha R bootcamp to a small group of trainers and interested helpers to gauge the maturity of the existing Software Carpentry materials. At the time, we identified a number of problems in the material that needed by fixed before running our next bootcamp. Fortunately for us, Diego Barneche had been working on this problem already, and ran an R bootcamp in late October up at the University of Sydney with much more mature materials with great success.

We followed the same format as the Sydney bootcamp: starting out with a full day of R, followed by a day covering the standard Software Carpentry Shell and Git materials.

We had an extraordinarily wide range of skill levels at our bootcamp, from senior researchers whom had never programmed before, to researchers who use R weekly and wanted to learn more. Most of the materials proved to be quite challenging, and we only managed covered half of it. The shell lessons proved to be similarly challenging, taking us three quarters of the second day rather than the recommended 3 hours. 

The exercises I adapted from the plotting example in the functions lesson turned out to be a little ambitious for our novice learners!

Despite the challenging nature of the material, we received lots of positive feedback both during and after the bootcamp. This is thanks to in no small part our fantastic helpers: Andrew Lonsdale, Harriet Dashnow, Tim Rice from the COMBINE student group, and Alistair Walsh were omniscient and omnipresent throughout the two days, and the first day would not have gone as smoothly without Pip Griffin and Noel Faux, who took time out of there busy schedule to help where they could.

Overall, we were fairly happy with the R materials, and with a few tweaks, they will be ready for our February ResBaz conference.