Four Carpentries Collaborative Lesson Development Training (CLDT) cohorts are running through the UC OSPO Network this summer and fall. The software licensing cohort is confirmed and already full.
Three cohorts are still forming. You can join an already-scoped team or propose a new lesson and build your own.
What is CLDT?¶
Teams of 2-5 people spend the training applying backward design to a lesson: who they’re teaching, what learners need to be able to do, what exercises get them there, and how to structure it in the Carpentries Workbench.
By the end, you’ll have a complete outline and a working draft of several sections.
Certification requires one more step: teaching part of the lesson and debriefing with a trainer on what you learned and what to improve.
Before joining, at least one team member must have completed Carpentries Instructor Training or Learner-Centered Teaching.
Option 1: join the “Librarians as Open Source Stewards” cohort¶
This lesson is scoped and ready. It builds on skills librarians already have - curation, preservation, metadata, community stewardship - and treats them as open source contributions.
We need 2-4 people to help develop and pilot it.
Option 2: propose a new lesson¶
Two slots are open for new lesson ideas. If you have a topic that fits the open source and OSPO ecosystem - security practices for academic open source, open source in non-CS research, governance models, contributing as a non-coder, reproducibility and open data - pitch it.
To propose, you need a topic and a rough sense of who you’re teaching. That’s it. If the idea is a good fit, we’ll work with you to recruit a development team before the cohort starts.
Finished lessons live in the UC OSPO curriculum catalog and get taught through UC OSPO and partner programs. From there, lessons can move into the broader Carpentries lesson programs or go through Carpentries Lab, an open peer-review process focused on lesson design, content quality, and accessibility.
The Lab is currently reviewing by invitation, so early contact matters.
What authors get¶
Lab acceptance qualifies you to submit to JOSE (Journal of Open Source Education). The JOSE review is separate - it evaluates an accompanying paper, not the lesson itself.
Authors who complete both get a Crossref DOI. The publication is peer-reviewed, indexed by Google Scholar, and follows you if you move institutions. The UC OSPO Network will provide editorial support for teams pursuing JOSE, including mentorship through submission and review.
Lessons staying institutional can still get a Zenodo DOI. We maintain a Zenodo community connected to our GitHub organization, and DOI minting is part of the publication process before a lesson goes public.
You don’t need broad adoption to get credit for your work.
We provide Workbench-compatible repository templates and setup support so teams arrive at CLDT ready to build. Most lessons stall at the pilot stage. We actively create teaching opportunities through UC Carpentries and the CURIOSS network so lessons get tested and refined.
If contributors move institutions, lessons hosted in the UC OSPO GitHub organization can continue to be maintained through network oversight.
Express interest by June 30¶
Open an issue on GitHub or email tdennis@library
Tell us which option you’re responding to, who would be joining you, and for Option 2, a brief description of the lesson idea.