The following is a guest post by Jennie Rose Halperin, a member of the Community Building Team at Mozilla. Before joining Mozilla, she received her Masters in Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Humboldt Universität Berlin. Professionally, she is interested in creating communities of change, metadata, feminism, open culture, and information literacy. You can follow Jennie on twitter or check out her website.

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Greg Wilson asked two telling questions at the opening of the Software Carpentry in-person instructor training in Toronto at the end of April. “Who has taught a university class?” Roughly two thirds of the forty participants raised their hands.

The response to the next question, “Who has had training on instructional design and teaching?” surprised me. Only a handful of people replied affirmatively.

Most of the participants at the session were scientists looking to improve their teaching skills, but I was there as part of a special affinity group. As a librarian, I interact with patrons, researchers, students, and other learners constantly, but have never taken a class on instructional design. This three-day crash course guided me through the basics at breakneck speed. From live teaching to presentations on MOOCs, inclusivity, and collaboration, we covered a remarkable amount of material in our short time together.

What I found most useful about the workshop was its emphasis on demonstrable and measurable learning goals and objectives as well as constant feedback from learners. All too often, particularly at university, students are not encouraged to give and receive feedback at the peer or instructor level. The Software Carpentry model, which encourages collaboration and face-to-face / peer-to-peer interaction, utilizes best practices from educational design and psychology to create an organic learning resource for students and teachers alike.

During the collaborative sessions, our diverse backgrounds became clear to me. I am a novice programmer and teacher who considers herself an expert learner, whereas many of the participants were expert programmers who were novice teachers and learners and vice versa. Through recorded lessons, we were able to watch ourselves give ten-minute classes on our subject of expertise. Though I cannot watch my video on metadata and version control without cringing, I know that these exercises make me a better teacher as well as a better learner.

Teaching Software Carpentry is an empowering act both for yourself and your affinity group. As the only organization running free workshops based on sound pedagogy, we are training the next generation of scientists (and soon librarians!) to change our fields for the better. What makes Software Carpentry unique and popular is that it is free, structured, and above all, it works. The workshop promises to save participants time and energy, and over the past few years, it has delivered on its goal, leading to continued support from the scientific community.

During the workshop, a participant tweeted, “Charismatic founder/leader: check; enthusiastic followers: check; free indoctrination; check #swcarpentry is a cult!” Though I am a bit wary of the sentiment, if Software Carpentry is a cult, count me in.

• Want to be involved in teaching Software Carpentry to librarians? Check out Libraries Learning Code.
• Want to take a Software Carpentry workshop? See if there’s anything in your area.
• Want to host a bootcamp? Get in touch!
• Want to become a Software Carpentry instructor?
• Say hi. Tweet at us @swcarpentry or @MozillaScience on twitter.