Originally published elsewhere
First pilots have taught — here's what came back
This is a summary. Read the full post at https://ucla-imls-open-sci.info/blog/2026-05-19-pilots-first-results/.
We ran the first external community pilots of our open science curriculum for librarians, and the instructors taught us as much as anyone. Seven pilots across four lessons — Containers and Virtual Machines, Data Dashboards with R, Open Qualitative Research (QualCoder), and DMP 101 — at five institutions in Illinois, Colorado, Arizona, Virginia, and the UK.
Three things came back clearly:
- Lessons run longer than the estimates say. Jennifer Stubbs clocked the DMP session at about 100 minutes against a shorter estimate. Instructors need buffer time, especially around technical setup.
- Funder policies change faster than curriculum. The DMP lesson needed urgent updates for NSF 26-202 and recent NIH changes — content like this has to be verified right before a session, not assumed.
- Concrete, line-level feedback is the most valuable kind. Nathaniel Porter sent 20 specific items — off timing estimates, accessibility language, screenshot quality, a logic error in a code block. Specific GitHub issues beat general impressions every time.
Sixteen more pilots are scheduled for summer and fall, and six lessons still need instructors (sessions run 1.5 to 4 hours).
Read the full write-up — with the detailed feedback and what we’re changing — at ucla-imls-open-sci.info.