Speaker
Description
The Industrial Ecology Digital Lab (https://www.iedl.no) is a small RSE group (7 people) within NTNUs Industrial Ecology Programme (https://www.ntnu.edu/indecol - with around 70 people, organized into eight Professor groups). One of the main purposes of the lab is to support the development of novel research code. As part of that support, we aspire to lift the general coding competence of the whole group.
Our efforts run in parallel to more institutionalized training efforts, like Code Refinery and the Carpentries but also specialized courses (such as HPC or specific Industrial Ecology related courses). We want to bring our students and stuff to a base level to make use of these more intensive course, but also take them up from the course and show them how apply and extend their skills. This has proven to be a challenge, as the group is quite diverse in terms of coding skills and research needs, but most critical due to the high turn-over rate within the group.
Thus is is impossible to create some kind of common basis from which you can lift the competence of the whole group. Over the years, we have tried different approaches to address this issue. These range from structured tutorial series, to informal lunch gatherings, to drop-in sessions. All had their advantages and disadvantages, but none really worked out.
We now settled for some user-centered approach, which is based on an "Open Support" system. The initial feedback is quite positive, but we are still in the process of evaluating the new system.
In this discussion session, we want to present our past and current approaches. Most importantly, we want to discuss with the audience what they think is the best way to lift the general coding competence in a diverse group and hopefully gather new ideas to address this issue.
