Rewrite "About Us" page with details of Research Coding Course

Author: ZedThree

about.md

@@ -4,27 +4,179 @@ title: About Us
 subtitle: Skills and training for people developing research software
 ---
 
-Coding Club at the University of York is an informal group for people who work with research software.
-We get together every other week, and run two main types of meetup.
+# Introduction and target audience
 
-**Drop-in Code Clinic**: a group call on which you can discuss problems / ideas / anything around the 
-topic of research software. Somebody will do their best to point you in the right direction on a problem,
-and all will be happy just to chat!
+Research Coding Club at the University of York is an informal group for people
+who work with research software. We offer a modular training programme to
+support researchers at any level in developing their software development skills
+and applying the [FAIR (Findable Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable)][fair]
+principles and open research practices to their research software and data.
 
-**Seminars**: we invite people from around the university to deliver a short talk (up to an hour) on a topic 
-of interest. These can be pitched at any level, and usually end with a lively discussion. Some topics we've 
-covered are:
+We welcome everyone working with research software, from undergraduates to
+professors, from beginners to experts, and from people who create analysis
+scripts on their laptops to those who run first principles modelling on
+supercomputers.
 
-* Version control
-* Numerical programming with Python
-* Software testing
-* Introductory Bioinformatics
-* Understanding modern CPUs
-* The Software Sustainability Institute
+Research Coding Club runs a training programme, where you can learn more about a
+range of skills, and code clinics, where you can get help with your own research
+software.
 
-and you can see a (mostly!) full list of past seminars on the website homepage.
+# Research Coding Course
 
-## Contact us
+Over the years we have developed extensive training materials and delivered
+hands-on tutorials and seminars to hundreds of researchers on everything from
+testing your code to how CPUs work. This year, we're building on the University
+of Sheffield's excellent [FAIR²4RS][fair24rs] course to deliver a training
+programme that will teach you a whole range of skills:
+
+(all dates to be confirmed!)
+
+- Better Software for Better Research: Introduction to the Research Coding
+  Course, Wednesday 22nd October 2025
+- Software lifecycle planning, <span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 5th</span> November 2025
+- Version control:
+  - Introduction to Git and GitHub, <span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday
+    19th</span> November 2025; Repeated <span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 21th</span> January 2026
+  - Git collaboration, <span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 4th</span> February 2025
+- Software design, <span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 3rd</span> December 2024
+- Testing and Continuous Integration, <span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 18th</span> February 2025
+- Documentation, <span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 4th</span> March 2025
+- Reproducible computational environments, <span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 18th</span> March 2025
+- Packaging, <span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 1st</span> April 2025
+- Publishing a software paper in JOSS, <span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 16th</span> April 2025
+
+### Better software for better research: Introduction to the FAIR training programme
+
+Wednesday 22nd October 2025, 2pm, online
+
+In this introductory session we will try to understand what the FAIR principles
+are and why they have emerged. We will then introduce some actions on how to
+apply them to software and present a global review of the training programme.
+
+### Software lifecycle planning
+
+<span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 5th</span> November 2025
+
+When you start writing software it is often very useful to think about the
+development process and how you will make your software sustainable in the long
+term. In this module we will introduce important aspects of software development
+in research: software lifecyle, management plan, licences and
+dissemination. This module should allow you to ask yourself the right questions
+when starting a research software project.
+
+### Version control
+The version control module has two distinct training sessions: one for beginners and one for more advanced users.
+
+#### Introduction to Git and GitHub
+
+<span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 19th</span> November 2025, 2pm, hands-on
+in-person<br>
+Repeated <span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 21th</span> January 2026, 2pm, hands-on
+in-person
+
+If you’ve never heard of or used version control and Git before this is the
+course for you. We start by introducing version control and exploring how it can
+be beneficial to researchers, then we introduce some useful tools and get
+started with some basic workflow using these tools. We build on those
+foundations with collaborative exercises that introduce key concepts such as
+forks, pull requests and branches and give you the chance to get some hands-on
+experience with using version control in a research setting.
+
+#### Git collaboration
+This course aims to help you develop a deeper understanding of how Git works to
+facilitate collaboration. It builds on the foundations laid by the Git beginners
+course. The core idea around the course is that by improving your understanding
+of working with branches and how to make your commits tidier and neater it makes
+it easier to understand pull requests and Git history which in turn makes it
+easier to collaborate and work on code with others (including your future
+self!).
+
+
+### Software design
+<span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 3rd</span> December 2024, in person.
+
+The way you write your code will have a massive impact on how easy it is to
+maintain. During this course we will learn how to create maintainable, readable
+and reusable code. Using examples and exercises, we will see that creating high
+quality code is actually quite straightforward when you understand how to do it
+and what tools are available to make your life easier.
+
+### Testing and Continuous Integration
+<span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 18th</span> February 2025, in person.
+
+This course aims to equip researchers with the skills to write effective tests
+and ensure the quality and reliability of their research software. No prior
+testing experience is required! We’ll guide you through the fundamentals of
+software testing using Python’s Pytest framework, a powerful and
+beginner-friendly tool. You’ll also learn how to integrate automated testing
+into your development workflow using continuous integration (CI). CI streamlines
+your process by automatically running tests with every code change, catching
+bugs early and saving you time.
+
+### Documentation
+<span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 4th</span> March 2025, in person.
+
+Well-documented software promotes reproducibility, maintainability, and
+increased research impact through wider adoption and citation. This course
+teaches researchers how to document their software effectively, making it
+accessible and understandable to others. It covers topics such as writing
+readable code and usage instructions.
+
+### Reproducible computational environments
+<span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 18th</span> March 2025, in person.
+
+Ensuring that others are able to take your code, run it, and are able to produce
+the same (or equivalent) results is one of the key tenets of FAIR and
+reproducible research software. This course will provide you with an overview of
+different ways to make your code reproducible and then focus on virtual
+environments as a specific tool for computational reproducibility.
+
+### Packaging
+<span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 1st</span> April 2025, in person.
+
+Packaging your software is one of the important steps in a software project to
+make it both findable and accessible. This course will provide you with an
+understanding of why and when packaging is useful, what different standards
+exist to package Python and R projects and take you through each step of the
+packaging process.
+
+### Publishing a software paper in JOSS
+<span style="color: #ff0000">Wednesday 16th</span> April 2025, hybrid.
+
+Did you know that you can actually publish a paper about your software? This is
+an ideal way to get recognition (and citation) for the software you have spent
+countless hours creating. In this course we will walk you through an example of
+submission in the Journal of Open Source Software. We will make an example
+software submission to the journal, and thanks to the collaboration of the
+Editor in Chief of JOSS (Arfon Smith), we will look at how the review process is
+done.
+
+## Prerequisites
+Each session will have some individual prerequisites. Some experience with
+developing research software or scripts, for example in Python or R, might be
+needed. Please refer to the individual course details to know what they are.
+
+## Learning outcomes
+After completing this modular programme, participants should be able to:
+
+- Understand the FAIR principles and describe how they apply to research software
+- Explain how applying FAIR principles to research software can support open research goals such as transparency, reproducibility and reusability
+- Identify actions that can be taken at different stages of the research lifecycle to enhance the FAIRness of their research software outputs
+- Develop a plan addressing the intended scope, impact and lifespan of their research software
+- Describe different types of software licence and discuss their potential implications for reuse of research software, including commercialisation
+- Apply best practices for scientific software development including design, version control, testing, continuous integration and documentation
+- Associate their research software with a unique and persistent identifier and use metadata to enhance its findability, accessibility and reusability
+- Identify repositories that provide long-term persistent storage for research software
+- Apply approaches such as packaging and containers to enhance the reusability and reproducibility of research software.
+
+# Code Clinic
+
+We also offer a service where you can discuss problems / ideas / anything around
+the topic of research software. We have a bunch of experts in a wide variety of
+technical subjects and research disciplines. We are currently refactoring how we
+run this service, and will announce details shortly!
+
+# Contact us
 
 There's a few ways you can get in contact with us:
 
@@ -41,7 +193,28 @@ Finally, we have a [Google Calendar][3] that contains information about our even
 
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+<p xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"> 
+All content (excluding logos or where explicitly stated) licensed under the 
+<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/?ref=chooser-v1"
+   target="_blank"
+   rel="license noopener noreferrer"
+   style="display:inline-block;"
+   class="sm-a">
+       CC BY-SA 4.0
+<img style="height:22px!important;margin-left:3px;vertical-align:text-bottom;"
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+alt="Creative Commons Logo CC">
+<img style="height:22px!important;margin-left:3px;vertical-align:text-bottom;"
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+alt="Creative Commons Logo Person">
+<img style="height:22px!important;margin-left:3px;vertical-align:text-bottom;"
+src="https://mirrors.creativecommons.org/presskit/icons/sa.svg?ref=chooser-v1" alt="Creative Commons Logo Backwards C"></a>
+license. Some material taken from [FAIR²4RS][fair24rs] under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
+</p>
+
 [1]: https://groups.google.com/a/york.ac.uk/forum/?hl=en-GB#!forum/research-coding-club-group/join
 [2]: https://uoy.slack.com/archives/C015ZG0CVBL
 [3]: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0?cid=Y19ydXBjMGo0MnQzMjdkb2ZtOTIzbjFwM2Fib0Bncm91cC5jYWxlbmRhci5nb29nbGUuY29t
 [4]: mailto:research-coding-club-group+managers@york.ac.uk
+[fair]: https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18
+[fair24rs]: https://rse.sheffield.ac.uk/training/fair4rs/