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GAA Team Meeting

29 May 2023

ACTION ITEM (GAAs):

  • Please let Angela know by the end of this week (2 Jun) whether you intend to return to your position

Introduction: Welcome Minori!

  • Works with Mary Chapman in the Public Humanities Hub (PHH)
  • Creates and delivers workshops with PHH
  • Provides support to Digital Scholarship team with consultations
  • Works with Digital Humanities clients to create online digital-narrative projects

GAA project share:

Reza, Citation-management (CM) team

  • Provides support for free CM software (Zotero, Mendeley)
  • Holds one-on-one consultations

Shayan, Digital Scholarship (DS) team

  • Creates and delivers DS workshops
  • Machine-learning workshop attracting 50+ participants
    • Currently working on dividing into three separate workshops

Lily, GIS/maps team

  • Focus has been on web mapping
  • Involved in musicology research project using Leaflet
    • Allows project owners to be able to control content themselves
  • Currently, building a QGIS toolkit of introductory tutorials for common usage
  • Additional information (overview) of GIS work: http://gistbok.ucgis.org/bok-topics/gist-and-libraries-archives-and-museums

Ashley, Data team

  • Provides support for statistical analysis and visualization with R
  • Restructured workshops from longer (2-3 hour) sessions to shorter (1 hour), more frequent sessions
    • So far, positively received
  • Working to create similar materials for Python

Minori, DS team/PHH

  • Involved in history project using Scalar, with embeds from Knight Lab
  • Scalar: https://scalar.me/anvc/scalar/

Eugene, on behalf of Billy, Research Data Management (RDM) team

  • Reworked format of workshops from 60-90 minutes to short, ‘luchtime’ workshops (30 minutes)
  • Topics cover the basics of RDM: file naming, file formats for saving data, depositing data, etc.

  • RDM workshops: https://ubc-library-rc.github.io/rdm/
  • Also, helping DS team with occasional Git and GitHub workshops

Research Commons Team Leads and members:

  • Joe Melanson, CM Team
  • Prubjot Gill, CM Team
  • Jeremy Buhler, Data Team
  • Sarah Parker, new Team Lead for Data Team while Jeremy is away
  • Evan Thornberry, GIS Team
  • Eka Grguric, DS Team
  • Eugene Barsky, RDM Team
  • Angela Liu, Research Commons Coordinator
  • Brett Dimond, Research Commons Program Assistant

Crediting GAA work:

  • Research Commons document: https://ubcca.sharepoint.com/:w:/t/ubcLBRY-gr-UBCLibraryResearchCommons/EX-j_LFCuNVLk4gOPye2evoBTM8Zf72TMeczq7fqecB_cg?e=u5O3ZS
  • Pertains to workshop and Open Educational Resources (OERs) contributions
  • Two related, but differentiated concepts:
    • Copyright
      • Pertains to ownership rights of the work (intellectual property)
      • Work done by paid employees of UBC is the property of the university
    • Attribution
      • Giving credit to the creators of a work
      • Attribution: contribution of, at least, 10% of a work
  • Research Commons’ planned approach is to display attribution in three locations on GitHub:
    • README file
    • Acknowledgements page
    • Landing page (optional)
  • Goal is to create different entry points for different audiences
  • Gray areas exist around copyright if work is carried on past your time as a student
  • Check-in: Does this meet your needs?
  • Attribution facilitates the process of editing/changing existing material
    • Lily contacted former GAA to discuss altering workshop material
  • No further comments from GAAs
    • Team Leads will proceed with current approach

Teaching strategies (reflection/discussion):

  • Mentioning (and repeating) consultations in workshops often leads to improved uptake
  • Allow time for audience to catchup
  • Teaching provides an opportunity to learn new things
  • Sharing workshop recordings with participants (i.e., knowing they can refer to it later) can help participants focus on what the instructor is doing
  • During consultations, participants often arrive with a great deal of anxiety, as they feel they must absorb all the information in a single session (1 hour)
    • Letting them know they can focus on the same material in another consultation can put their mind at ease, and allow them to concentrate better
  • Workshop feedback from participants is helpful in improving teaching
    • Incorporating a link into a workshop often improves the quantity of feedback received
  • In-person repetition of a workshop provides the experience to forsee and preempt potential issues
  • For future consideration: having students share screen with instructor, but not other participants
    • Goal: To assist with technical troubleshooting, as well as to gauge the capacity of the audience to follow along
  • In-person vs. online workshops
    • Most teams offering online workshops
    • Some in-person offerings saw as little as 10% of registrants actually attend
    • Online attendance has been closer to 50% of registrants
    • Online offerings may also allow us to catch people who might not otherwise come into the physical library building
    • Some Team Leads have found that offering hybrid workshops results in no in-person attendees
    • Recommendation to offer in-person and online, but to avoid hybrid
    • In-person workshops can be useful in resolving technical issues, as well as helping the instructor gauge audience engagement
    • Online workshops can be useful during the summer, as many people are off campus
      • Though, early summer can see high demand for in-person workshops from faculty (e.g., for summer DS projects)
  • GAAs can sign-up for free instructional training through UBC’s Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology at https://ctlt.ubc.ca/programs/all-our-programs/instructional-skills-workshops/.

Fall-term hiring:

  • All current GAA positions will remain from Sep 2022 - Apr 2023
  • GAAs: Let Angela know by the end of this week (2 Jun) whether you intend to return to your position
  • Job will be posted if no response by the end of the week