Research IT

Summer Carpentry Training

Members of Research IT are contributing to the current series of Carpentry workshops for researchers, postgraduates and staff at the University of Manchester, which was kicked off early in June with an online Library Carpentry workshop.

Led by Aleksandra Nenadic (Technical Training Manager, Software Sustainability Institute based at the University of Manchester), the workshops were organised and delivered jointly by colleagues from Methods@Manchester, the University of Manchester Library, the University of Manchester Research IT, and the Manchester branch of the Software Sustainability Institute.

The first workshop in the series was a Library Carpentry workshop. These aim to emulate the success of the previously run Data and Software Carpentry workshops and are aimed at the University of Manchester’s postgraduate students, research and other staff who develop software or deal with or analyse data as part of their work.

Subjects for the Library Carpentry workshops included:

  • Working with Data (Regular Expressions)
  • Data Cleaning with OpenRefine
  • Introduction to Git & GitHub.

Doug Lowe (Research Software Engineer), assisted by Chris Grave (Research Infrastructure Analyst), delivered the 'Automating tasks with UNIX Shell' session as part of this workshop.

All Carpentry workshops are very much hands-on with participants encouraged to code-along with the instructor who demonstrates the material using practical examples. Participants are also encouraged to ask questions and provide feedback at any time as a team of helpers is on hand to troubleshoot technical issues, answer questions and offer hints and tips.

In addition each workshop also has its own tailored supporting online documentation, allowing participants to review the material and go through it in their own time and at their own pace. Prior to the workshops, drop-in sessions are made available where the training team is available to answer any questions relating to prerequisites or any other queries relating to the upcoming workshops.

There are two more Carpentry workshops scheduled for July and September 2021:

Software Carpentry - 13th - 16th July 2021

This will focus on automating tasks with shell, Python, and version control with Git/GitHub. It will be delivered by Nilani Ganeshwaran (UoM Library), Robin Long (formerly of UoM Research IT) and Michael Berks (SSI Fellows based at UoM) with assistance provided by Kamilla Kopec-Harding, Anja Le Blanc and Doug Lowe (UoM Research IT) and Phil Reed (UoM Library). Places are still available – please see the Software Carpentry event website for more information including registration instructions.

Data Carpentry 14th - 17th Sept 2021

This will focus on teaching the best practice in data organisation, tools for data cleaning, and fundamental data skills using the R programming language. It will be delivered again through collaboration from colleagues from UoM Library (Nilani Ganeshwaran and Phil Reed) and Methods@Manchester (Reka Solymosi, Duncan Bradley, Ioana Macoveciuc). For more information including registration instructions, please visit the Data Carpentry workshop website.

If you are unable to attend the courses, the documentation from all the workshops is in the public domain and is available to all under a Creative Commons licence. Also some of the courses are scheduled to be repeated later in the year by Research IT such as UNIX Shell which reuses some of the Carpentry teaching material . Please see the Research IT training catalogue for further details and subscribe to our monthly newsletter or follow us on Twitter for training announcements.