Many colleagues of Arba Minch Water Technology Institute (AWTI) showed interest in attending the Python training which I offered last March. I therefore offered another round of the same training. You can find the training materials through this link.
Based on the previous round, I made a couple of changes:
- I introduced practice sessions. Experience from the previous round showed that participants mainly followed the training sessions, but did not practice much by themselves. By offering assignments and sessions for working on those assignments, I hoped to stimulate personal practice.
- Training assistants joined the sessions. From the earlier training I invited colleagues to help during the training. In this way, there were multiple persons available for personal support of the participants. I was assisted by Daniel Asele, Getachew Enssa, Manyazwal Getachew and Samrawit Dereje.
- I included the possibility of earning a certificate. Earlier, I was unaware that a big reason for joining trainings is to get a certificate. I do however not believe in handing out a certificate based on only training attendance. Therefore, participants need to make a final assignment to be eligible for a certificate, by using their own data.
Interest versus application
The interest in the training was high (66 registrations). However, similar to the previous round, there was quite a difference between interest and actively participating in the full training. 54 persons attended at least one session, but 32 of these attended most sessions for the four core modules. At the moment, only the fifth (bonus) session on multidimensional (satellite) data remains to be offered. Apart from participating in the training, there is also the gap between following a training and using it yourself. Many participants do not realize that skills in Python depend on personal application much more than on following a training. Initially I thought that I could help 60+ persons towards better data processing. I have to adjust my expectations, and I must be happy with the five to ten colleagues that truly get started on using Python.