{"id":3510,"date":"2016-03-29T10:29:42","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T17:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mozillascience.org\/?p=3510"},"modified":"2016-03-29T10:29:42","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T17:29:42","slug":"making-friends-with-github","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/mozilla-science\/making-friends-with-github\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Friends with GitHub"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the areas of challenge we see most frequently in bringing new folks onboard to \u201copen science\u201d is the learning curve involved with open tools, particularly those who are not well-versed in the world of coding and open source.<\/p>\n

A couple weeks ago, we had the opportunity to work with one of our Mozilla Fellows for Science, Joey Lee<\/a>, on developing a \u201cFriendly Intro to GitHub\u201d workshop<\/a> at the University of British Columbia<\/a>. \u00a0The workshop assumed no experience on the part of the participants and is designed to be taught in one day. \u00a0While there was some mention of how GitHub works with Git, we tried to stay focused on the online interface with some dalliance in GitHub Desktop just to keep it simple.<\/p>\n

\"Friendly<\/a>

“Friendly Intro to GitHub” workshop hosted by University of British Columbia Library<\/p><\/div>\n

We started with essentials such as what GitHub actually is, a glossary, and some examples then let folks get down and dirty with GitHub by setting up their very own first project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What makes GitHub so great as a tool for working open is the ability to preserve version control even while collaborating with multiple people. \u00a0After lunch we had participants really experience the collaborative aspect<\/a> by creating issues, making pull requests and forking. (Not sure what all that means? Check out the glossary<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\"Collaborating<\/a>

Collaborating on GitHub<\/p><\/div>\n

The workshop finished up with a discussion on the essential pieces of a repository such as READMEs, Codes of Conduct, Licenses, and CONTRIBUTING docs.<\/p>\n

Our post assessment survey<\/a> gave us some great feedback on what worked and what didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\"Rating<\/a>

Feedback on pace of the workshop<\/p><\/div>\n

There was strong agreement that participants learned something valuable from the workshop (4.5 on 5 pt scale) and the pace of the workshop was good for learning (4.6). \u00a0The comments were where we found gold, however.<\/p>\n

On the value of the workshop:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“It for sure made GitHub more accessible and understandable. I tried learning it before by myself, but found that very difficult. I feel now that I have a much better understanding of the concepts and main work flows, and using that, it will be much easier and hopefully more straightforward to use github!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Regarding comfort with GitHub after the workshop:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI learned lots but there is still so much more to learn! So many different things github can be used for, I want to learn more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned the important concept – Github is not only used for coders! It’s good that the activities in workshops are not related to coding.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Tweet<\/a>The best part of our post-workshop assessment was that 100% of respondents said they would recommend this workshop to others!<\/p>\n

\"Pie<\/a><\/p>\n

GitBooks and GitPages were requested by several people for follow-up workshops, so look for those to come in the future!<\/p>\n

Workshop materials including exercises, schedule and etherpad can all be found here: http:\/\/joeyklee.github.io\/friendly-github-intro\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Feel free to fork the repository<\/a> and make it your own!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the areas of challenge we see most frequently in bringing new folks onboard to \u201copen science\u201d is the learning curve involved with open tools, particularly those who are not well-versed in the world of coding and open source. … Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290376],"tags":[384906,19680],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3510"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}