Data Science Teaching Alternatives from The Carpentries

Well, thank you so much. So I’m Tracy Teal. I’m the Executive Director of The Carpentries and I’m a stand-in for Keri Jordan who is our Senior Director of Equity and Assessment. She will be coming a little bit later, but wasn’t feeling well this morning. I’ll let Sher introduce herself. SherAaron: Hi, I am Sher. I am the Workshop and Logistics Manager for The Carpentries. Tracy: So we’re really excited and fortunate for the opportunity to be at this meeting today. We’ve already really valued the conversations.

00:35 - And we are all here because we’re interested in representation. We’ve heard some amazing talks so far about overcoming institutional barriers and bias, access mentoring, network, and accessibility at the institutional level. We’re here to speak from the standpoint of alternative pathways to on-board individuals from diverse backgrounds to learn data science skills and perspectives, specifically through inclusive pedagogy. Diversity encompasses group and social differences that can be engaged in the service of learning. [pause] So, I want to highlight, this is from Forbes Magazine, this is just a brief history of data science.

01:20 - And you can see it highlights some people and the work that they did, but what you might not notice here, but that is this entire history, as pulled from Forbes Magazine, is established by white males. And we know that actually, probably a lot of other people have worked in this space, but often their work doesn’t get highlighted. But now we now have an opportunity to move forward to make this representation in data science more diverse. And so we still have room, opportunities to go, so I like the changing of the problem space. So we use the word challenge and opportunity - “chopportunity”.

02:04 - So I think that there’s a lot of ‘chopportunities” in this space. And so the question then is how do we bring people with diverse perspectives to data science? How do we empower more people to work with data when the keepers of the conversation don’t often look or identify with them? We know that empowering more people to work with data allows us to answer more questions in science and society, but what does it take to attract and, importantly, to retain them? So something that The Carpentries is doing to help address these issues is aiming for inclusive pedagogy in our training and our resources. SherAaron: So, one of the things we want to do is we want everyone to have the skills and perspectives and access to use data to address the questions that are important to them, and we’ve seen throughout this conference, everyone, we all come from different backgrounds, we all have different questions on the same topic. So what we aim to do, is to make sure that you have what you need to answer those questions, regardless of your background. So, our mission at The Carpentries is to empower individuals to unlock the potential of data and software to advance progress in science and society.

03:22 - We do this by developing and scaling training and communities of practice by fostering an open global community, teaching the skills and perspectives needed to turn data into knowledge and knowledge into change. The three elements we consider when thinking about inclusive pedagogy are tools, training, and community. And so when you look up at the screen, you see under Tools, we have Open Access, Varied Mobility, Agile, and Reproducible. Under Training we have Culture Responsible, Accessible, Continuing Education, Best Practices. And in Community: code of conduct, collaborative, transparent, and inclusive.

04:08 - And these are just a few of the things that we find when we are doing our teaching and being inclusive, that we want to make sure that we capture so that everyone is included, but it’s also they can attain these things. They can take these things away when we’re, once they leave from our training. The Carpentries: there are various ways for you to find us. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and/or check out our website. Quick question, how many people here are affiliated with The Carpentries? Look around the room.

04:40 - So if you have any questions about The Carpentries, we’re here all week, so feel free to check out those persons with their hands raised or myself or Tracy. Thank you. [clapping] .