Picking a topic, message, and learning objectives

Picking a topic

Understand what motivates your audience.

• Take their temperature.

  • Take the temperature of the audience you wish to participate in a workshop. This can be done formally (through a survey, structured interview, or focus group) or informally (a chat over coffee with a future workshop attendee or group of attendees).

  • Gauge how much they understand about reproducibility, what their attitudes and beliefs are, and what their concerns, interests, and motivations might be.

• Create an Audience Profile.

  • Create an Audience Profile for a ‘typical’ audience member. This is a living document you can update as you meet and learn from your audience.

  • Tailor the narrative of your workshop to resonate with their motivations.

  • Tailor your information to address what their information needs might be.

    • The learner’s general background and prior knowledge.

    • The problems they face.

    • How you can help them.

(credit: Software Carpentry Instructor Training)

Picking a message

Construct the core message of your workshop in four parts:

1. What is reproducibility as it relates to the audience?

• Use lay language or provide appropriate definitions

• Start with positive, succinct, definition of reproducibility that is appropriate for your audience

2. Why should your audience care about reproducibility?

• Always start with the "why"

  Why do you care about reproducibility? To give them the “I have a dream” message, not the “I have some facts” message, or even the “I have a plan” message you need to identify your motivation for wanting to improve reproducibility. Think about:

  1. How does this issue relate to your experiences?

  2. How does this issue relate to your values?

  3. How does this issue impact your role / profession / discipline?

  4. What worries or hopes do you have about this issue?

  5. How do you fit into this picture?

  6. Why is this issue important to you?

  7. Why are you talking to this audience about the issue and why should they care?

• Now focus on your audience's "why"

  1. How might this issue relate to their experiences?

  2. How does this issue relate to their values?

  3. How does this issue impact their role/ profession / discipline?

  4. What worries or hopes might they have about this issue?

  5. How do they fit into the conversation about reproducibility?

  6. Why do you need them?

  7. Why should they care about this issue?

• Identify your audience's needs, key interests, and concerns

  1. What existing policies on reproducibility are relevant to them?

  2. What support and informational needs might they have?

  3. What concerns and worries do they have?

  4. What advantages and value does your solution hold for them?

• Write a succinct message that tells your audience the "Why" of reproducibility that gives them the story of:

  1. Why YOU (specifically) are talking to THEM (specifically). If you have shared values relating to the issue, tell them how your values led you to care about reproducibility.

  2. Why they should care about reproducibility

3. What is the solution and its impact on irreproducibility?

• Write a brief outline of your workshop goal and describe how it will address irreproducibility.

4. What should the audience specifically do?

• Write very specific and targeted "asks", requests, or calls-to-action for your audience.

Craft your workshop's message

• Connect the above 4 parts into one message that emphasizes the “Why” and leads to clear calls-to-action. Calls-to-action are clear directives or instructions for the audience to follow; “Deposit your research data in a data repository” is an example of an appropriate call-to-action for a reproducibility workshop.

• Evaluate whether your workshop’s message is:

  • Focused

  • Solution-oriented

  • Supported by evidence

  • Targeting the key interests of the audience

  • Unassuming of technical background

  • Optimistic

  • relaying clear calls-to-action

Create your workshop learning objectives

• Good learning objectives are:

  • Active – they describe what the audience can do

  • Attractive – the audience wants to achieve them

  • Comprehensible – the audience know what they mean

  • Appropriate – to the audience’s current goals and career plans

  • Attainable – most of the audience will mostly meet the learning objectives, with due effort

  • Assessable – we can see if they have been achieved

  • Visible – in the workshop information

(Credit: Software Carpentry Instructor Training, Baume 2009)