Research Coding Q&A, March 24 2015, 3 PM PDT

[raynamharris]

@FCTweedie Hmm. I hadn't thought of that, but I think so.

I also try to get 5 min of face time to tell the recruits or incoming students about what we do. Then, the newsletter of other info in the welcome pack is somewhere they can go for more information.

[noamross]

@IsaKiko What is "Research Tool Speed Dating" and how does it work?

[IsaKiko]

I haven't personally been to one, @FCTweedie will know more.
My understanding is, that each team member is responsible for the tool they are good at. Then people can come chat to everyone to find out what the most suitable tool for their research task is.

[FCTweedie]

We set up stations around a large room with a range of our tools set up with a demonstrator. Students come round in small groups and get to "meet" each tool for about 5 mins. If they want to learn more, they can put their names down to be notified next time we run a training.

[emudrak]

Haha! Our newsletters are not as fancily-formatted as yours... http://cscu.cornell.edu/news/statarchive.php No staff time for such creativity!

[FCTweedie]

It means that we can get a bunch of tools in front of students, get them to meet the team (so they know that we're fun and friendly!) and also meet each other. The Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences here at UniMelb really like it as a mixer for new students.

[raynamharris]

@emudrak Nice! My newsletters start as a word document, but then a coworker makes them beautiful with Illustrator. Its fun working with an artist!

[noamross]

What kinds of things are included in the tools?

[FCTweedie]

We have a short demonstration and explain how each tool can be useful in different types of research. Sometimes we walk them through a short use case, but usually I find showing some cool examples of the sort of results you can get works really well.
We also hand out small flyers with the list of tools on show and where to get them and our contact details. I had a student who had been to a speed dating last year get in touch recently as he'd realised that he'd like to make maps, which was really great

[jhollist]

@IsaKiko The bootcamp we did last year had a follow up course at Unvi of Rhode Island. We had about 10 students in that class. It was loosely organized but allowed the students (all who had attended the bootcamp) to keep working on the materials. The website for that class is http://scicomp2014.edc.uri.edu/. I think it was fairly successful because I do know at least 3 of the students are actively using R in their work.

[emudrak]

For me, use of social media with an "office account" is primarily a way to connect with people like you all, who are already aware/keyed into the need for scientific computing and know there are resources and are seeking them out. For example, I was alerted to SWC through twitter, and then became involved. I rarely interact with clients/students through our office's social media account.

[BillMills]

oooo that followup to know that your students are actually using R after-the-fact is really valuable!

[FCTweedie]

@BillMills @jhollist It's the best compliment you can get, right?

[jhollist]

@BillMills and one even attended the last useR! meeting in LA. I didn't even get to that

[BillMills]

And the best metric! Does anyone else have any strategies for measuring what students adopt into their own work that they learned at one of your events? <--- hard problem

[jiffyclub]

SWC follows up with surveys just after a workshop and a few months later to find out if people are still using the skills they learned in the workshop. Beyond that we don't contact people unless they sign up for one of our email lists.

We do encourage people to stay connected locally, but we don't track how often that actually happens (probably not very).

[noamross]

@jhollist Hit on something important - people attend/participate in these things because they're actively using them in research. Very few people become interested in the tools for their own sake. But since peoples' need for a tool varies over time, you need a much larger group of "passive" members in order to keep a critical mass of participants in things like a hacky hour. We have 350 people on our listserv, but maybe 10% are active on it at at time, and attendance at meetings varies between 5 and 25.

[jhollist]

@jiffyclub does SWC know how many current instructors are former bootcamp attendees? I would guess the number is pretty high (and growing...)

[raynamharris]

@emudrak Surprisingly, a lot of companies or gruops have started following our twitter account. Sometimes we RT information about fellowships and interships and such...I think it helps increase awareness to a broader community.

[FCTweedie]

@jiffyclub A lot of participants at ResBaz said on the feedback surveys that they plan to keep in touch, but I'd be interested to know if that goes beyond following each other on Twitter. Our dream is, of course, to see a collaborative paper come out of our program (or a romance )