ReproNim Webinar Syllabus Presentation: Open questions

[lnnrtwttkhn]

Open questions that we are happy to receive feedback on:

Content questions:

• What are strategies to keep everyone on-board during hands-on coding sessions?
  • Benchmarks for no. of TA's per number of participants?
• What are simple open datasets or tasks that one could use to produce data during the course that could be put under data management control with DataLad that are not specific to a subfield of neuroimaging (i.e., not everyone is familiar with fMRI)?
• Is it feasible to go from collecting data to paper manuscript within one session?

Practical questions:

• What are good video conferencing tools that one can use for a hands-on workshop? (see #4)
  • Audience response tools
  • Pre and post conference feedback
  • Conversations about expectations
• How can one ensure to not waste too much time on setting up computers and software etc.?
• What are computational resources (HPC) that one can easily use without too much preparation?
• Any more ideas on how can we make the most use of the training materials we create?
  • Workshop recordings to Youtube
  • Website with materials can stay online forever, but shall we migrate it to some place where it is more easily findable? Can we link our materials with ReproNim resources?
  • Contribute some of our materials back into the repronim modules, especially the "reprucibility Basics" module

[satra]

one suggestion is to get your students to get familiar with and use local compute resources that they would be using for their research. if such a resource doesn't exist, then you could use a cloud platform. relying on personal computers may be tough depending on what kind of analysis you plan to do.

[lnnrtwttkhn]

Some feedback that I noted from the Webinar:

• Set requirements for participants to ensure a specific minimum level of expertise
• Relatedly, we could have an "office-hour" before the workshop in case participants have problems with installation etc.
• regarding video conference software people recommend Zoom
  • Zoom has breakout rooms for smaller groups and discussions
• If we (need to) go virtual with the workshop, we need a way to notice when people encounter issues and problems and let us know about this, so we don't loose participants along the way
• Which datasets can we use: @jbpoline recommended data from the scipy stats module that contains e.g., brain volume data, IQ data etc. @jbpoline could you send the links? That would be great! Thank you!

@adswa, what did I forget? (I fear quite a bit...)

[lnnrtwttkhn]

Thanks @satra for your feedback!

one suggestion is to get your students to get familiar with and use local compute resources that they would be using for their research.

At the Max Planck Institute we have access to a PBS-based HPC cluster which can also be accessed remotely. Most people who work with MRI data know how to use it. So, yes, I think it would be useful for people to learn a new tools when interacting with the HPC.

you could use a cloud platform

That's a good suggestion, thanks! Could you specify which cloud platforms you use and maybe provide links how one could use them for teaching! Thank you very much!

[adswa]

For Juelich, I can check with the Juelich Supercomputing Center whether they can provide temporary accounts for workshops (that they don't hold themselves) to external participants. With that we would have the possibility to log into a Jupyter Hub, so attendees would have minimal requirements. But I'm super certain that this will be hell of bureaucracy for anyone external, because people in my institution really like paper-based forms and we're still in the aftermath of a severe security incident, so no promises.

[adswa]

Quick idea: I could be able to convince people in my institution that our workshop will give grad students some of the course credit that they need to get throughout their degree. This may be a very useful incentive for Juelich people. Is something like this also possible in the MPI, @lnnrtwttkhn?

[lnnrtwttkhn]

Is something like this also possible in the MPI

It's a bit tricky since the MPIB is an independent research institution and does not have teaching per se. However, I could talk to people at the almost-next-door Freie University Berlin if they are accepting our workshop as an official course people could get credits for. Alternatively, some senior researchers at the MPIB have teaching responsibilities at the Berlin universities and it could be possible to team-up with them and integrate our workshop into their teaching.