Content from Week 1 Discussion Questions

Last updated on 2024-04-18 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

  • What is involved in serving as a Carpentries Trainer?
  • What should you expect from this training?

Objectives

  • Understand what is involved in being a Trainer.
  • Prepare to complete the steps for Trainer checkout.
  • Predict what they will learn from reading How Learning Works.
  • Recognize that teaching principles may apply differently to different training contexts within The Carpentries.

Reading

How Learning Works:

  • Foreword
  • About the Authors
  • Introduction

Carpentries readings:

Preview to get a sense for what is contained in these lengthier references:

Discussion Questions

Discussion questions in this curriculum for each week serve the following purposes:

  • To help structure your reading and thinking about topics prior to each meeting
  • To help structure our conversations about topics during each meeting

Please write or think through short answers to the discussion questions before each week’s meeting.

Carpentries Readings & Previews

1. What questions do you have about being a Trainer?

How Learning Works:

Foreword

2. What do you think about the distinction between “Science of learning” and “Science of instruction”? How do you expect these ‘sciences’ to intersect? Where might they be different?

3. How Learning Works is presented as a solution to the “too soft/too hard” problem. What experience have you had with sources that are too soft or too hard? In education, programming, or other areas?

About the Authors

4. How might the backgrounds and research interests of the authors shape their writing?

Introduction

5. This book is organized around seven principles for teaching. Share an example of how you’ve seen one of these principles influence learners’ experience.

6. In our discussions, we will often move between levels in the diagram below. We will apply the 7 principles to teaching about how to teach (in instructor training) as well as teaching technical skills (in a Carpentries workshop). We’ll even talk about learning how to teach teaching in your role as a Trainer! Do the 7 principles apply equally well to all of these contexts? Are there any important differences to keep in mind?

Layers of Carpentries Instruction

Overview of Trainer Training

This program is an on-boarding course designed to support Carpentries community-members in preparing to teach Instructor Training courses. It is not a substitute for Instructor Training; in contrast, this training includes fewer contact hours and more independent work time stretched over a 10 week period.

Each participant brings a different skill set to this training. Most trainees have background in educational settings and/or experience teaching Carpentries-style workshops. Trainees who are new to both should plan to invest extra effort in the readings. All trainees, and particularly those new to the community, are expected to seek continuing connection and mentorship through engagement with the Trainer community after completing this training.

Trainer Checkout

In addition to attending weekly meetings, there are additional requirements for Trainer certification. These are:

  • Observe a teaching demonstration session
  • Observe (with option to participate) 4 hours of an Instructor Training course
  • Trainees who are not certified Carpentries Instructors should complete Instructor certification concurrently. This includes attending a full Instructor Training course as a learner if not yet attended. Attending a course or demo within the training time frame can fulfill the above requirements for observation if requested.

Each week, we will discuss assigned readings. Discussion questions are provided to offer a framework for reading and conversation; these should be completed or at least thought through before each meeting. If you need to miss a meeting, questions may be submitted by email or by adding responses to the Etherpad to enrich your group’s conversation. When we meet we will always begin with a discussion of the first question about trainee perspectives and interests, facilitated by your host. Discussion may at times digress from the discussion questions, and we will usually will not have time to talk about all questions during our 1 hour meeting slots.

At sessions 2-9, one participant will play each of the following roles:

  • Lead: assumes the Zoom “host” role and faciliates conversation after discussion of the first question has concluded. Importantly, the lead selects from remaining Discussion questions in the curriculum, choosing which to use first, and which to cut if they wish to spend more time on a particular topic. Leads should consider experimenting with structure, e.g. using breakout rooms or other facilitation strategies as desired. This is a great place to get feedback on a method you’d like to try! The Lead role is not about being an authority, but rather is an opportunity to practice guiding discussion – a skill you will use when you teach Instructor Training. Your host will be available to help out as needed. If you use breakouts, you can decide if you wish to join a group or discuss faciliatation strategies with your host during the breakout time.
  • Notes: takes notes on conversation in the collaborative document (Etherpad or Google Doc) for the session. We do not need perfect notes! In fact, lengthy notes can be hard to read. The goal is to create a basic record we can use, e.g. to refresh a prior conversation, review a missed meeting, or see what the other group talked about. It is ok to ask a speaker to make corrections if you feel something important was missed.
  • Questioner: The Questioner strives to identify questions, concerns, or points of confusion that trainees might have. The person assigned to this role has a responsibility to set aside time to think about possible questions, but this is a role that everyone should strive to help out with. The person in the Questioner role is also asked to serve as a backup note-taker, which means paying attention to times when the notetaker is speaking or has to step away.

Your host will provide you with a proposed schedule for these roles for the full term. If it is impossible or impractical for you to play a role on any week assigned to you, please let your host know immediately.

Instructor Training Events (in brief)

Most of our Instructor Training events are taught online, via Zoom. When circumstances permit, some Member organisations also host events in- person. All events must have a least 2 Trainers in attendance. New trainees should plan to be available for teaching assignments as soon as certification is complete. New Trainers will be matched with experienced Trainers whenever possible. New trainees are also welcome to request a role as a third trainer to reduce the teaching load and enhance observation opportunities during their first training.

The Trainer Community

Trainers meet monthly for calls at 2 different time slots to accommodate global time zones. Attending these calls his highly recommended (trainees are welcome!), and all Trainers are asked to review meeting notes when they are unable to attend, as important information and updates are shared there. Regular meeting times are on the first Thursday of the month; however, we keep a ‘placeholder’ slot on the calendar for the 3rd week of the month. The placeholder can be used for special events or non-routine discussions, and is also a substitute time when the first week falls during a holiday. All meetings can be found on the Community Calendar and joined via links on the meeting Etherpad.

Trainers also communicate asynchronously via Topicbox listserv, Slack, and GitHub. New trainees will be invited to join the Topicbox list early in their training, and will also be added to the #trainers Slack channel if they have registered with The Carpentries Slack community. Communications on the Instructor Training GitHub repository can be received by “watching” the repository. We also suggest joining our general list, The Carpentries Discuss listserv on Topicbox for anyone who has not done so already.

Communications Checklist

Take a moment to sign up for commmunications channels:

Communications channels to participate in

General sources of information about The Carpentries

Trainers Leadership

Once upon a time, the Trainer community consisted of a handful of people who met twice monthly: once to discuss training events, and once to make decisions about community business. As our community grew, decision-making became more complex, often falling to a handful of people with time to invest, or to The Carpentries Core Team. This system did not ensure that the interests of all Trainers were adequately addressed in decisions.

In 2020, some of these active participants were recruited to draft a new governance structure for the Trainer community, and in 2021 our first elections were held. The Trainers Leadership group meets 1-2 times per month, consults with Core Team on matters of interest to Trainers, and proposes changes to management of our curriculum and community to make it more welcoming, fun, and sustainable.

New Trainers are an important voice to represent in Leadership, because they have a fresh perspective on the challenges faced by newcomers. This role is available to all participants, not only those with extra time to share: we suggest that people serving in this role consider reducing their other service activities in the community to compensate during their tenure. The period of service is 1 year.

A Culture of Contribution

Trainers are a vital part of The Carpentries community. In addition to training Instructors and supporting the collaborative maintenance of our Instructor Training curriculum, Trainers typically take on leadership roles in their own communities, locally or globally. Many assume leadership within the Trainer community, but all are expected to contribute by coming to meetings and/or sharing thoughts or feedback in other ways. Whatever your plans, don’t wait to get involved! If you see a typo in the curriculum, try out a pull request to fix it, or ask around to learn how. If you wonder if a section could be better, search the repository for existing issues on the subject, and add your voice to the conversation or start a new issue for us to work through during our next update. If you have time, consider joining Trainer meetings now!

Key Points

  • The Trainer role comes with powers and responsibilities. Some powers are limited to preserve sustainability of The Carpentries, but we will work with you to meet your goals as closely as possible.
  • Teaching and learning are separate, though related, processes. And then there is learning to teach!
  • Most popular texts do not aim to onboard readers to engaging with primary literature in a field. This presents barriers to responsible engagement across disciplines, particularly in education.

Content from Week 2 Discussion Questions

Last updated on 2024-04-18 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

  • How can prior knowledge influence a workshop or training experience, and how can we plan to adjust to variation?
  • How can the structure of information be explored and made explicit to support learning in a workshop or training event?

Objectives

  • Examine relationships between prior knowledge and learning new things.
  • Plan how to use pre-assessment data in preparing to teach Instructor Training.
  • Evaluate the knowledge-organization strategies in terms of ease of use for new Instructors.
  • Apply a concept map to explore concepts of teaching and learning.

Reading

How Learning Works:

  • Chapter 1 + Appendix A
  • Chapter 2 + Appendix B

Discussion Questions

1. What stood out to you from this week’s reading? This might be key points, things that made sense in light of your own experience, things you’re not convinced of, or questions that you have from each chapter.

  • Chapter 1
  • Chapter 2

How Learning Works

Chapter 1: How Does Students’ Prior Knowledge Affect Their Learning?

2. Give an example of a time from your experience when a learner’s prior knowledge negatively affected their learning. Why do you think prior knowledge had such an impact in this case? Do you think any of the strategies suggested in this chapter might have helped?

Appendix A

3. Have a look at the pre-assessment survey for Instructor Training events. Can you identify one question that might influence how you approach teaching, depending on the distribution of responses? If you could ask one additional question, what would it be?

Chapter 2: How Does the Way Students Organize Knowledge Affect Their Learning

4. Examine Figure 2.2 (p.50 of the print edition). How do these diagrams relate to knowledge or learner mental models that you are familiar with? Which do you think best represents a learner who has just taken a Carpentries workshop?

5. Take a look at the strategies for ways Instructors can assess and enhance their own knowledge organization at the end of Chapter 2 (p. 59-65). Choose one strategy and think about how an Instructor could apply it when preparing to teach a Carpentries workshop. On a scale from 1-10, how challenging do you think it would be for a new Instructor to use?

Appendix B

6. * (Try not to skip this question) Draft a small concept map (3-5 items with labeled connections) for your own eyes only (not to be shared!) that partially explains one of the following topics:

  • Prior knowledge
  • Knowledge organization
  • Workshop organization

Then, share your experience with the process. Did you learn anything from making this map? How could you organize it differently if you tried it again?

Key Points

  • Prior knowledge about teaching strategies varies among trainees in Instructor Training courses. Being attentive to this will improve your impact.
  • Pre-assessment surveys are a critical component of all Carpentries workshops. Help us make them useful for you!
  • Carpentries curriculum templates provide some support for knowledge organization. Instructors can implement additional strategies to help learners create useful connections.
  • Concept maps are a challenging, minimally structured task. They are useful for exploring concepts and relationships prior to teaching because they can make the organization of knowledge more explicit.

Content from Week 3 Discussion Questions

Last updated on 2024-04-18 | Edit this page

Reading

How Learning Works:

  • Chapter 3
  • Chapter 4

Discussion Questions

1. What stood out to you from this week’s reading? Think of things that made sense in light of your own experience, things you’re not convinced of, or questions that you have.

  • Chapter 3
  • Chapter 4

How Learning Works

Chapter 3: What Factors Motivate Students to Learn?

2. Take a moment with Figure 3.2 (p.80). Can you think of an situation you’ve encountered in a classroom that is explained by this figure?

3. Do you think learners at Carpentries workshops will have primarily learning goals or performance goals? How about at Instructor Training events?

4. This chapter offers a number of strategies for establishing value and building positive expectancies (p.83-89). Which are most relevant to Carpentries workshops and trainings? Are any of them not relevant in this setting? Why or why not?

Chapter 4: How Do Students Develop Mastery?

5. This chapter discusses expert “blind spots” (now re-named in our curriculum as “expert awareness gaps”) and cognitive load. How might these affect learners during Instructor Training? How about Trainers?

6. When students learn skills but don’t learn how to apply them, they may fail to use those skills when they are relevant. How can we help learners bridge the gap between learning and application? Is this different for Instructor Training vs Carpentries workshops?

Key Points

  • Learner motivation in Instructor Training can be very different from the motivation we see in workshops.
  • Instructors can influence learner motivation with three ‘levers’ of value, expected efficacy, and a supportive environment.
  • Carpentries Instructor Training aims to teach several component skills of teaching. However, this does not guarantee that all skills will be actively used. Trainers can prepare trainees to bridge this gap by explicitly discussing application as well as supporting practice and feedback.
  • Trainers experience expert awareness gaps and cognitive overload too!

Content from Week 4 Discussion Questions

Last updated on 2024-04-18 | Edit this page

Reading

How Learning Works:

  • Appendix D
  • Chapter 5 - What Kinds of Practice and Feedback Enhance Learning?

Discussion Questions

1. What stood out to you from this week’s reading? Think of things that made sense in light of your own experience, things you’re not convinced of, or questions that you have.

How Learning Works

Appendix D: What are Learning Objectives and How Can We Use Them?

2. One of the learning objectives stated in the Instructor Training curriculum is: “Critically analyze a learning objective for your workshop.” What level of Bloom’s taxonomy does this objective fall under? Examining the chart on p. 246, try re-writing this learning objective at a lower level and a higher level. Do you think this objective is at an appropriate level for Instructor trainees? Why or why not?

Chapter 5: What Kinds of Practice and Feedback Enhance Learning?

3. This chapter discusses the importance of creating good opportunities for practice. In the context of a Carpentries workshop, what role can an Instructor play in this regard? A helper?

4. Feedback is an essential component of effective practice. In what ways do learners in a workshop get feedback on their progress? Is that feedback likely to meet the criteria for useful feedback outlined in this chapter? Why or why not?

5. In both Instructor Training and workshops, Carpentries surveys provide feedback from learners, and additional feedback mechanisms (e.g. minute cards and one-up-one-down) supplement this for a rich source of information. Do you think there is any additional advantage in asking a co-Instructor or co-Trainer for feedback? Why or why not? If so, how would you go about seeking such feedback?

Key Points

  • The cognitive level of a task is directly related to the action expected from learners – not the complexity of the material or the stage of a workflow. Bloom’s Taxonomy and associated verb charts are useful tools for evaluating the level of cognition required.
  • Exercises and other classroom practices that keep learners actively engaged can provide many small opportunities for practice and feedback.
  • Co-Instructors and co-Trainers can have a different perspective on instruction compared with learners, but we do not have a systematic way of collecting this feedback. A little advance planning and communication can help ease the awkwardness of sharing between peers.

Content from Week 5 Discussion Questions

Last updated on 2024-04-18 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

  • Key question

Objectives

  • Explain the impact of The Carpentries Code of Conduct on classroom climate.
  • Predict challenges faced by new Instructors in creating a positive classroom climate and propose possible solutions.
  • Predict challenges faced by new Instructors and learners in transferring metacognitive skills to a new learning process and propose possible solutions.
  • Connect common Carpentries classroom practices with strategies that support metacognition and identify the relationship between them.

Reading

How Learning Works

  • Chapter 6: Why Do Student Development and Course Climate Matter?
  • Chapter 7: How Do Students Become Self-Directed Learners?

Discussion Questions

1. What stood out to you from this week’s reading? Think of things that made sense in light of your own experience, things you’re not convinced of, or questions that you have.

How Learning Works

Chapter 6: Why do Student Development and Course Climate Matter for Learning?

2. How might The Carpentries Code of Conduct function in supporting an “explicitly centralizing”(p.171-172) classroom climate?

3. Choose a strategy among those suggested on pages 180-186 that seems useful or essential to a Carpentries workshop. What factors might prevent an Instructor from effectively implementing this strategy? As a Trainer, how might you help?

Chapter 7: How do Students Become Self-directed Learners?

4. Most of our learners have rich experience with metacognitive strategies, but may not automatically apply them to the content of our workshops or Instructor Training. Why do you think this is? How can we support our learners in transferring metacognitive skills appropriately?

5. (Try not to skip this question.) Try making a concept map that links one or more of the strategies on p.203-215 to one or more practices that could be implemented in a workshop to support metacognition. What concepts did you connect? What relationships did you identify?

Key Points

  • The Carpentries Code of Conduct is one of many features that creates a positive classroom climate for Carpentries workshops.
  • Instructor trainees will face challenges as they develop skill in teaching. As in Carpentries workshops, a core goal of our two-day training is to prepare them to encounter and surmount those challenges.

Content from Week 6 Discussion Questions

Last updated on 2024-04-18 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

  • Key question.

Objectives

  • Propose one way to support learner interaction early in a workshop even when pressed for time.
  • Apply a concept map to illustrate the importance of explicit connections in knowledge and learning.
  • Distinguish challenges related to skill level faced by learners from those faced by Instructors.
  • Predict challenges posed by expert awareness gaps in the context of teaching Instructors how to teach.
  • Propose a strategy to support Instructor trainees in implementing guidance on pacing in spite of competing priorities related to content and time.

Reading:

Welcome
Instructor Training: Building Skill With Practice
Instructor Training: Expertise and Instruction
Instructor Training: Memory and Cognitive Load
Trainer Notes
Etherpad Template - skim

Instructor Training Curriculum

1. What stood out to you from this week’s reading? Think of things that made sense in light of your own experience, things you’re not convinced of, or questions that you have.

Welcome

2. This module introduces the Instructor Training event. Depending on how Trainers use the curriculum, this section can be more or less interactive and can take more or less time than it is formally allocated. This is especially important when trainings get off to a slow start for logistical reasons. Try to identify one opportunity for interaction with learners during this episode. How might you use this to establish a positive learning environment without running out the clock?

Building Skill With Practice

3. (Try not to skip this one!) Try creating a small concept map that includes “teaching” and “learning” as concepts. How did you describe the relationship between teaching and learning? What other concepts and relationships did you include? If you would like to try an online tool for this, visit https://excalidraw.com.

4. We introduce skill acquisition in this module, but really dig into expertise in the next. What is the purpose of introducing skill acquisition here? What should be emphasized here, vs in the next section?

Expertise and Instruction

5. Do you think you might have any expert awareness gaps on the subject of teaching or learning? How might such gaps become apparent when teaching others how to teach?

Memory and Cognitive Load

6. This episode explains why we should teach slowly and allow time for practice. However, many of our curricula contain more content than can sometimes be covered in our ‘2-day’ format. How can we help our trainees remember to keep it slow and resist the urge to ‘get through’ everything by talking faster?

Key Points

  • The Carpentries Instructor Training curriculum offers many opportunities to model, as well as to teach, good practices.
  • Skill acquisition models explain challenges faced by learners and Instructors, Instructor trainees and Trainers.
  • Expert teachers may have filled in awareness gaps in subjects they teach, but may still have gaps on the subject of teaching.
  • Going slowly is a challenge that takes constant effort and compromise.
  • There are many approaches and supporting documents available to teach Instructor Training. Many of these are referenced in the Instructor Notes.

Content from Week 7 Discussion Questions

Last updated on 2024-04-18 | Edit this page

Reading:

Building Skill With Feedback
Motivation and Demotivation
Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility
Teaching is a Skill
Wrap-up and Homework
Welcome Back

Discussion Questions

1. What stood out to you from this week’s reading? Think of things that made sense in light of your own experience, things you’re not convinced of, or questions that you have.

Building Skill With Feedback

2. Reponses to Carpentries pre- and post- surveys are intended to be useful to Instructors, Hosts, and The Carpentries. In particular, we aspire to using data from these surveys to improve understanding of the functionality of our programming as well as promote our successes and needs to funders. This is critical to the sustainability of The Carpentries overall. However, this requires that surveys be systematically administered. Nobody likes surveys, and it’s not fun to hound people to take them, either. What can we do to persuade Instructors to make more consistent use of these important assessment tools? (Responses might include ways to make the surveys themselves more useful.)

Motivation and Demotivation

3. Avoiding demotivating learners is at least as important as motivating them, but there are many demotivating “traps” an instructor can fall into even when they are aware of the problem. What strategies can we give our instructors for recovering from these slip-ups?

4. How might the concepts taught in this lesson apply to the process of learning to becoming a better teacher?

Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

5. This is a new episode and will continue to develop over time. What content do you think might be missing that would be important for our Instructors to understand in the context of Carpentries workshops?

Teaching is a Skill

6. When trainees give feedback, especially when giving feedback to themselves, they are VERY likely to comment on the number of times they said “um” or “uh” during their practice presentation. How would you go about helping them to level up their feedback to address more impactful features?

Key Points

  • Convincing trainees to collect feedback is a fundamental goal. Teaching them to use it is the next step.
  • Developing awareness of demotivating scenarios is a fundamental goal. Teaching trainees to cope with them is the next step.
  • Many trainees may have a growth mindset with regard to computational skills and a fixed mindset with regard to teaching skills.
  • New Instructors should start their improvement process with ‘low hanging fruit’ – teaching techniques they can easily adopt. For some, this might center on presentation style while for others, it might have more to do with classroom mechanics. Focusing on one thing at a time to improve on can help people evaluate and prioritize their goals as they progress.

Content from Week 8 Discussion Questions

Last updated on 2024-04-18 | Edit this page

Reading:

Getting Started on Instructor Certification
The Carpentries: How We Operate
Live Coding is a Skill
Preparing to Teach
More Practice Live Coding

Discussion Questions

Instructor Training Curriculum

1. What stood out to you from this week’s reading? Think of things that made sense in light of your own experience, things you’re not convinced of, or questions that you have.

Checkout Process

2. Not all trainees are interested in completing checkout for certification. We’re ok with that! What we worry about is when trainees who do want to certify are intimidated or deterred by some part of the process. What role can a Trainer play in supporting or encouraging trainees who want to complete the checkout process?

The Carpentries: How We Operate

3. What questions do you have about policies and procedures for running a workshop? Where do you think trainees might find this information confusing or unclear?

Preparing to Teach

4. Write a learner profile for an Instructor trainee and share with the group (see the “Additional Exercises” page for detailed instructions on learner profiles). How different are your profiles? What kinds of support might each of your imaginary trainees need?

5. The exercise on evaluating learning objectives still needs work. The goal is to get learners a) looking at learning objectives critically and b) thinking in levels like Bloom’s Taxonomy without actually introducing the jargon and complexities of the Bloom’s model. In practice, however, learners are very prone to thinking in terms of steps rather than levels of cognitive challenge. Can you think of a change to this exercise, or a different exercise entirely, that might be more effective?

Key Points

  • Thinking critically about Bloom’s Taxonomy is typically beyond the Blooms’ level we can expect Instructor trainees to perform at. Examine your learning objectives carefully to calibrate your expectations for this episode and meet learners where they are.
  • Instructors are unlikely to face a Code of Conduct violation, but need to know what to do if this occurs. Reassurance of team support and clear instructions on reporting are the most important elements to communicate.
  • Trainees may be intimidated by many elements of checkout. It is important to emphasize that teaching demonstrations are a friendly opportunity to give and receive feedback, not a high-stakes test, and that our Core Team is there to support them with any questions they may have during the checkout process.
  • Participatory live coding keeps participants engaged, generates immediate feedback, and creates opportunities to model a healthy response to error. These features explicitly support learning and motivation.
  • With instructional support, repeated practice and feedback can lead trainees to examine the component skills of teaching.

Content from Week 9 Discussion Questions

Last updated on 2024-04-18 | Edit this page

Reading:

Instructor Training: Working With Your Team
Instructor Training: Launches and Landings
Instructor Training: Putting It Together
Pre-Workshop Reading: The Science of Learning

Discussion Questions

1. What stood out to you from this week’s reading? Think of things that made sense in light of your own experience, things you’re not convinced of, or questions that you have.

Instructor Training Curriculum

Working With Your Team

2. How do you feel about the prospect of handling a Code of Conduct incident at an event? What questions do you have?

Launches and Landings

3. Introductions often include a lot of mundane content. How can an introduction cultivate motivation (per our recommendations) while still conveying necessary information?

Putting It Together

4. Try the “Organize your knowledge” activity! Report back: what did you learn?

Key Points

  • Introducing a workshop has an outsized impact on the overall experience of the workshop. In addition to emphasizing preparation, it can be helpful to encourage trainees to think about this as a teaching challenge.
  • At the end of the workshop, we ask our trainees to take some time to organize some of the information they have learned. This is also a useful exercise to practice when preparing to teach the workshop!

Content from Week 10 Discussion Questions

Last updated on 2024-04-18 | Edit this page

Reading:

Examine The Carpentries Handbook: Teaching and Hosting
Review Trainer Guide
How Learning Works: Conclusion (p. 217-224)

How Learning Works

Conclusion p. 217-224

1. What is one area of teaching skill that you would like to work on? How did you decide on that goal? How could you advise an Instructor to prioritize their skill development goals?

Closing Questions:

2. What questions do you have about your role as a Trainer?

3. What questions do you have about The Carpentries community?

4. What are your goals as a Trainer?

5. What can The Carpentries Core Team and the Trainer community do to support you in your goals?