2023 Report

17/01/2024 21 min read Institutional

Summary of the Summary ✅

2023 was a complex year for education and science, as certain technological developments brought into discussion the importance of knowledge as a collective construction in which people, and not algorithms, are the protagonists.

Furthermore, many of the changes brought to us by the COVID-19 pandemic fully coexisted for the first time with previous practices, and “hybrid” life confronted us with new challenges and adaptations.

At MetaDocencia we also went through changes and learnings: after establishing a more stable position thanks to the founding support of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), we joined in promoting the development of open science in Spanish-speaking communities along with NASA, within the framework of the NASA TOPS initiative. We are happy for this new space of opportunity to continue doing capacity building.

Our team grew. We published, attended events, enlarged our hive of fellow communities, weaved networks and deepened the formalization of our processes to continue building skills and inclusive communities of open science in Spanish.

In this report, we would like to share data about all we have done in the past year, and highlight that it was possible due to the support, exchange, and collaboration of our entire community.

Acknowledgements ❣️

We especially thank Dario Taraborelli, Kate Hertweck and Carly Strasser for fostering a space to continue building in community.

Also to Chelle Gentemann and Team; and to the OLS and The Turing Way communities for continuing to grow hand in hand.

To all the communities in our Hive, for the collaborative work, reciprocity, and collective construction.

To our team of outside collaborators, who write, participate in, and support our work.

To those who joined workshops, open events, and the Pollen Project.

To the people who applied to our job searches, to those who are in our communication channels, share our news, and invite people they know to join.

To the journalists and media that have helped us expand our voice and mission.

To those who follow us personally from our daily lives, professions, and journeys, for the care and patience throughout the year.

Community 🙌

In 2023, the MetaDocencia team had representatives in over 20 local and international conferences.

In addition, we supported the dissemination of more than 50 events organized by fellow communities and linked to the topics we work on.

International and regional conferences allow us to further connect with other communities of practice, build alliances, and be visible to new funders. Here are a few milestones of our community in 2023, month by month:

January - February

These are the #SummerMode months in South America and, although our channels remain active, it is the time in which many people take vacations and organize the work for the rest of the year. In January and February of 2023 we continued to build community locally, yet always with a global outlook, and met with fellow communities from the North. Paz Míguez, Nicolás Palopoli, and Laura Ación met in London with Malvika Sharan and Yo Yehudi, two of the directors of our fellow community OLS. They planned collaborative work during the year, visited The Alan Turing Institute, and took the opportunity to strengthen our collaborative network.

Images of the team members who joined with Malvika and Yo in London in January 2023 Images shared by its main characters.

March

#Khipu2023

  • Laura Ación was a speaker in the session “Ethics and Social Impacts in AI”, with Paola Ricaurte, Sasha Luccioni, and Andrés Morales, facilitated by Laura Alonso Alemany. Recording available (in English) on YouTube.
  • With the Vía Libre Foundation, we supported the organization of a workshop on the “Social Impacts of Artificial Intelligence, led by Laura Ación, Laura Alonso Alemany, and Luciana Benotti.

We Turned 3 Years Old

In 2023, MetaDocencia celebrated 3 years of responsibly building scientific and technical capacity with a local perspective. With this video we wish #HappyBirthdayMD to our entire community! (in Spanish)

April

Accelerating Open Science in Latin America

On April 17 and 18 we participated in the workshop “Accelerating Open Science in Latin America” #CZILatAmMtg, organized by the #OpenScience area of CZI. After two intense days of work focused on the needs and capacity building in Latin America, we ended this stage of the conversations with great satisfaction and community strengthening. Connecting with the scientific and research community is essential to learn and think about the interests of our region, from our region.

Family photo of Accelerating Open Science in Latin America workshop in Buenos Aires Accelerating Open Science in Latin America. Records of part of what was shared during the two days of this important event held for the first time in Buenos Aires.

Csv,conf,v7

We were also present at the csv,conf,v7 that happened between April 19 and 20 in Buenos Aires.

Jesica Formoso, José Luis Villca Villegas, Kate Hertweck, Malvika Sharan, Sabrina López, Tania Hernández, and Laura Ación were in charge of one of the keynote talks, “Collective creation of Open Science”. 🔗 Bilingual presentation with speaker notes: tiny.cc/csvconf2023

Full talk with subtitles.

Hive of Fellow Communities

In the csv,conf,v7 we presented the Hive of Fellow Communities, a collaborative project that connects efforts to confirm, once again, that science is a collective work. We invite you to explore the Hive at https://www.metadocencia.org/en/panal/, follow, and share the achievements of our entire extended community.

Imagen alusiva al panal de comunidades amigas de MetaDocencia Hive of Fellow Communities. Some of the organizations that joined our Hive in 2023.

So far, the hive has fourteen communities: 2i2c, ARPHAI, CABANAnet, Conectorial, CZI Open Science, ILDA, IOI, LA-CoNGA physics, MboaLab, Open & Equitable Model Funding Program, OLS, R-Ladies Buenos Aires, Talarify and The Turing Way. Joining in next are Centro de Computación de Alto Desempeño (CCAD) from Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, PREreview and QuantumQuipu.

We would be glad to see the hive grow bigger. For further information on how to join, contact us at info@metadocencia.org.

First Hybrid MetaDocencia Retreat

In a relaxed and familiar atmosphere, most of this beautiful group finally met in person:

2023 retreat. Some of the MetaDocencia team members who were present at our first face-to-face meeting in Buenos Aires. 2023 retreat. Some of the MetaDocencia team members who were present at our first face-to-face meeting in Buenos Aires.

Thank you to those who were able to attend for all the love, respect, and generosity! Thanks also to those who joined from afar!

We were so happy that preparations are already underway for the next retreat, in April 2024.

May

CW23

During the Software Sustainability Institute Collaboration Workshops 2023 (CW23) of the Software Sustainability Institute, on May 2nd Nicolás Palopoli co-facilitated the workshop “Communities of practice and the pursuit for Open Science on a global scale”, with Reina Camacho Toro ( CNRS/ CERN, LA-CoNGA physics) and Camila Rangel Smith ( The Alan Turing Institute). It was a hybrid workshop with discussions around the universality of current #OpenScience concepts and practices.

🔗 Read more in our blog (post in Spanish): https://www.metadocencia.org/post/cw23/

CW23. Nicolás Palopoli during the workshop presentation CW23. Nicolás Palopoli during the workshop presentation.

The Turing Way Book Dash

Laurel Ascenzi participated for the first time in Book Dash de The Turing Way (TTW). Our team will continue working together with TTW on accessibility, in Spanish.

Laurel Ascenzi participated of The Turing Way Book Dash in May 2023. The Turing Way Book Dash. MetaDocencia said “present!” through Laurel Ascenzi.

June

Open Science for Sustainability Workshop

Irene Ramos (CONABIO, Mexico), Laurel Ascenzi (MetaDocencia), and Enrique González Lozada (Autonomous University of Mexico) developed a workshop on Open Science for Sustainability, for the Sustainability Research and Innovation Congress 2023.

🔗 Presentation: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8115322

July

OLS-7

Patricia Loto, Jesica Formoso, Irene Vazano, and Mariela Rajngewerc graduated as #OpenScience ambassadors from the Open Seeds Cohort 7 program, with communitary projects on open science and artificial intelligence.

Screenshot of the OLS-7 graduation. Screenshot of the OLS-7 graduation.

Agosto

Uniting Communities to Expand Participation in Open Science

This month we continued to make progress in learning how to expand participation in open science. Together with the Bioinformatics Hub of Kenya (BHKi), SADiLaR through the ESCALATOR program, and VU Amsterdam, we joined forces with OLS to develop the new Open Seeds cohort, OLS-8. Our goal is to connect members of regional communities in the international open science network, as well as reinforce their role as representatives of open science through local activities:

🔗 Uniting Communities to Expand Participation in Open Science

September

Meeting in Amsterdam

We met with colleagues from the Hive during the DISC Unconference, which was held in Amsterdam. We worked on building projects that seek to promote diversity and inclusion in computer sciences.

In the photo, smiling and hugging, from left to right: Jesi Formoso and Laura Ación ( MetaDocencia); Lena Karvovskaya ( Free University of Amsterdam); Yo Yehudi ( OLS); Elisa Rodenburg ( Free University of Amsterdam); Esther Plomp ( TU Delft); and Emmy Tsang ( IOI).

Meeting in Ámsterdam. DISC Unconference. We had the opportunity to join colleagues from fellow communities in Amsterdam. Image: courtesy of the participants.

Code for All Summit 2023

Irene Vazano, Jesica Formoso, and Patricia Loto presented the project “Mapping of open science communities, organizations, and events in Latin America.”

💬 Find the video with Spanish subtitles in this link

October

Jornadas de Informática en Salud

The MetaDocencia team was also present at the Jornadas de Informática en Salud #JISHIBA. María Cristina Nanton and Sabrina L. López joined the panel “Challenges and strategies in the creation of health datasets for AI tools.”

Jornadas de Informática en Salud. Sabrina López and María Nanton added their voices as panelists. Jornadas de Informática en Salud. Sabrina López and María Nanton added their voices as panelists.

Co-Afina 2023

Melissa Black joined Co-Afina 2023, sharing ideas, values, and challenges from our community. Thanks to LA-CoNGA physics for the invitation!

🔗 Full presentation: https://zenodo.org/records/10064153

LatinR

Jesica Formoso, Patricia Loto, and María Cristina Nanton participated in LatinR, the Latin American Conference on the use of R in Research + Development, which was held in person in Montevideo, Uruguay. Maria presented a paper on the translation of R base. Jesi and Patri presented a Shiny app for “Mapping communities, organizations, and open science events in Latin America.”

🔗 Link to the Mapping presentation (in Spanish): http://tiny.cc/mapeodecomunidades

Jesica Formoso, Patricia Loto and María Cristina Nanton also were part of LatinR 2023. LatinR. LatinR. MetaDocencia was also present at the Latin American conference.

November

Present at the KEM

Nicolás Palopoli delivered the talk “MetaDocencia and the community approach towards open science and education” at the Knowledge Exchange Meeting (KEM) 2023, organized by CABANAnet in Costa Rica.

🔗 Link to the presentation: https://zenodo.org/records/10256496

Nico Paloponi at the KEM KEM. Nicolás Palopoli during his visit to Costa Rica to speak on open science and education.

The Turing Way Book Dash, Take 2!

Jesica Formoso and Patricia Loto collaborated in content development on accessibility, while sharing discussions and learning with other communities. María Nanton contributed by generating guidelines for content linked to translation and localization. Thanks also to Iván Poggio, Mariela Rajngewerc, and Laurel Ascenzi for their contributions through our Accessibility team.

The Turing Way Book Dash. María, Jesica, and Patricia from MetaDocencia added their contributions. The Turing Way Book Dash. María, Jesica, and Patricia from MetaDocencia added their contributions.

December

The Pollen Project is Launched

The Pollen Project now has its first group of participants! This initiative seeks to incorporate more people to represent MetaDocencia in communities, networks, and external events, recognizing their contribution to our mission and vision while deepening their community journeys. Based on what we learn in this pilot stage, we hope to improve and expand it in future editions!

🔗 Presentation available with speaker notes (in Spanish): https://zenodo.org/records/10285864.

We Gave the Manzanita Awards

After a great year of work, challenges, and joys shared among this beautiful team, we decided to reward each one’s contributions in a playful ceremony with a virtual and symbolic award that we called the “Manzanita Awards”. We toast to the path we have traveled and to everything that is yet to come.

Screenshot of the first “Manzanita Awards Gala”. Screenshot of the first “Manzanita Awards Gala”.

We are sorry that due to a force majeure event Moni Alonso could not receive her award live, but the gala was extended for a few more days and all the way to social media. Check out the Twitter thread (in Spanish):

Moni’s Manzanita Award, among others, was shared on social media.

Our Community, in Data 📈

In 2023, we generated a lot of content for social media and our website, with the aim of sharing news, ways of working, and our participation in different activities with the extended community of the different channels.

For instance, we are about to reach the first 100 publications on Zenodo! The MetaDocencia community also grew online thanks to the sustained work of our communications team: The MetaDocencia website saw over 28,000 unique visits! Our content on YouTube had over 1,300 views. That is the platform where anyone can find recordings of our workshops and talks. On LinkedIn, we gathered 219 more followers. On Twitter, 440 new accounts followed us–a 17% increase. On Facebook, 111 more people now follow us and on Instagram, 162. That is 36% more! Most of our daily communication is done through Slack. Our workspace has been growing since 2020 and currently has 738 members.

The news about NASA's award was shared 48 times by our community on Twitter. The news about NASA's award was shared 48 times by our community on Twitter.

  • The 7 published editions of our bilingual newsletter were very well received by 2,065 Spanish-speaking folks in our community (25.7% more than the previous year), with an opening rate of 41%.

Teaching 👩‍💻

In 2023, we organized 10 workshops with 141 attendees, an average of 14 people per event:

Number of attendees per course edition in 2023. Number of attendees per course edition in 2023.

When analyzing the percentage of attendees to our workshops by country, we see that they are mostly from Spanish-speaking ones, since we address our community in Spanish. People from 14 different countries joined! 11 of them correspond to Latin America:

Percentage of attendees per country to courses 2023.

By analyzing how attendees heard about MetaDocencia, we see the importance of the diversity of channels, how email has grown as a means of communication, and how important other people’s referral are to generate our community network:

Graph showing how people found out about our 2023 courses.

The average net promoter score (NPS), which measures whether people would recommend a workshop, was 96.3, very close to the maximum score of 100. In October 2023, we held our first hybrid workshop as part of the Argentine Biostatistics Group annual meeting. There were 44 attendees in total.

Workshops page on our website and recordings uploaded to our YouTube channel. Workshops page on our website and recordings uploaded to our YouTube channel.

Additionally, we improved and redesigned our workshop and event registration and certification process. Find the materials for each course through the following list:

  1. The Accessible Zoom with a Screen Reader workshop was published and taught 3 times between December 2022 and October 2023. There were also 3 editions of How to Teach Programming Online and of Present! Resources for Active Meetings. These were our most taught stable courses in 2023.
  2. The “MetaEvaluations: Evaluate While Teaching” workshop was improved and piloted twice in November and December 2022.
  3. The workshop Social Impacts of Artificial Intelligence was published and taught in person in March 2023, during the Latin American Meeting on Artificial Intelligence (Khipu 2023), in Montevideo (Uruguay).
  4. The in-person Train the Trainer workshop was adapted to the local audience and delivered with CABANAnet in Buenos Aires (Argentina), in April 2023.

CABANANet and MetaDocencia during the workshops. Images: courtesy of attendees. CABANANet and MetaDocencia during the workshops. Images: courtesy of attendees.

Workshop Impact Measurement 🎯

To improve how we measure our impact and increase our contribution to the academic literature while using data responsibly (for example, with approval from an external Ethics Committee), we started collaborating with knowledge acquisition researchers from the University of Buenos Aires, verifying the impact of our workshops on attendees.

The methods developed for this research, in collaboration with psychology scholars from the University of Buenos Aires, are under peer review in the open to publish and read journal Paideia - Journal of Education of the University of Concepción, Chile.

Publications 📚

Academic

Generative AI poses ethical challenges to open science, a commentary for Nature Human Behavior, access to the article from the blog in Spanish and English.

Zenodo

Based on our value “Science and Research”, we promote knowledge generation based on theory, reasoning, experience, and evidence. We have published 96 open access articles in our Zenodo community, between presentations, media appearances, blog posts, and support material for our workshops.

Number of views and downloads made by different users of the materials published in Zenodo by MetaDocencia during 2023. Number of views and downloads made by different users of the materials published in Zenodo by MetaDocencia during 2023.

All our materials in Zenodo have a CC BY 4.0 license, and thus can be downloaded and reused openly. Our publications on Zenodo had a total of 1,740 total downloads and 3,270 views. 6 of them had over 100 views and 2 had more than 100 downloads! Some examples:

Blog

We discuss different topics trying to provide the expert perspective of our team members, in addition to sharing news and providing open, accessible, and reusable resources. List of 2023 publications on the website blog (in English) by category:

Topics

Institucional

Resources

How in-class assessments can improve learning

Institutional 🌱

Guides, Instructions, and Work Guidelines 🗂️

MetaDocencia is consolidated as a fully-financed organization with 17 stable team members with different dedication, working remotely, and geographically distributed. This year was fundamental to consolidate the different processes that we went through as an organization and that we expressed in guiding documents that cover many of our activities and exchange spaces. We share them with the goal that they will be useful for other communities, organizations, and people.

In addition, in September 2023, we carried out a new round of hiring for project coordination. After receiving 134 applications, 3 people were hired. Meet the new team members in this post: https://www.metadocencia.org/en/post/team2023/.

Cantidad de postulaciones por país

Although the majority of applicants were from Argentina, the scope of the job searches was Latin American.

There is diversity among the academic backgrounds of applicants, which enriches the contribution of all the profiles that join the team:

Academic background of applicants

Applicants’ most recurrent educational level was a completed graduate degree:

Educational level of applicants

In 2023, we also implemented parental leave, in line with our well-being value. It is a specific policy that supports and follows the life projects of MetaDocencia’s team members and we hope it will be a reference for other communities and organizations.

Projects 💪

Catalyst

We have been working with partners CCAD, OLS, Invest in Open Infrastructure, 2i2c, CSCCE, and The Carpentries on the Catalyst Project, to offer cloud infrastructure services in Latin America and Africa.

As representatives of Latin America, we are proud to collaborate with other local communities in the biomedical sciences that will be supported by this cloud computing infrastructure.

🔗 Spanish post: https://www.metadocencia.org/post/20231215-comunidadescatalyst/

Funding Sources

We prepared several collaborative funding proposals with some of MetaDocencia’s fellow communities.

NASA

Photo of the year. Laura Ación at csv,conf,v7, sharing the support we have received from fellow communities and organizations that allow us to continue working on our mission. Photo: Melissa Black. Photo of the year. Laura Ación at csv,conf,v7, sharing the support we have received from fellow communities and organizations that allow us to continue working on our mission. Photo: Melissa Black.

National Science Foundation (NSF)

Another project that was funded is about the C3 Center in Arecibo, aimed at modeling and advancing equity and inclusion in education and research. We are happy to be part, with Ciencia Puerto Rico and the consulting firm SPEAR, of this collaboration with the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón (USC) and the Universidad de Puerto Rico-Río Piedras (UPR-RP) in Puerto Rico, and the Universidad de Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in the United States.

🔗 Spanish post: https://www.metadocencia.org/post/areciboc3/

Consulting services

We have partnered with influential organizations in open science and diversified our consulting services.

  • A significant milestone was our collaboration with CZI in organizing the “Accelerating Open Science in Latin America” workshop in Buenos Aires in April 2023. We supported the planning and execution of event activities by contributing to and coordinating a team of local experts. Other consulting services included:
  • Working with CS&S to identify and establish connections with Spanish-speaking folks and communities, support the organization of a focus group, and review the final project report;
  • Assisting IOI with translation services to support an exploratory research project on open infrastructure needs in Latin America, Africa and Asia; and
  • Organizing events on the decolonization of global health in collaboration with the QUEST Center for Reproducible Research, Berlin Institute of Health @Charité.

Training 🎓

MetaDocencia is committed to the continuous training and development of its team:

  • In 2023, we took advantage of many of the opportunities that CZI makes available through its open Capacity Building program, some with simultaneous interpretation to Spanish!
  • Members of the Communication, Accessibility, and Impact Measurement teams completed the Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF) course, taught by the Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement.

Shared CEF course certification. Shared CEF course certification.

  • Part of the team took English speaking lessons, which will continue during 2024.
  • Members of the Coordination team received personalized mentoring through BetterUp, also thanks to CZI.
  • We participated as trainees, mentors, facilitators, and organizers in the OLS Open Seeds program, with different projects. We finished the year building:
  • Governance 2.0, collaborative writing of Community Guidelines and an intervention protocol; Conflict of Interest (COI) Policy; Authorship Guidelines, and a periodic update schedule for our governance. Team members are Romina Pendino, Iván Poggio, Pao Lefer, and Laurel Ascenzi, with Vero Xhardez as mentor.
  • Structure and infrastructure for virtual cohort training, with team members Mónica Alonso, Julián Buede, Paz Míguez, Melissa Black, María Nanton, and Nicolás Palopoli, with mentorship by Gemma Turon.

All training efforts, partly financed by the 10% that we protect by contract for it, aim for the team’s continued development and growth as a reference for open science in Spanish-speaking Latin America.

2023 Advisory Committee 📜

MetaDocencia has the permanent support of its Advisory Committee. Following the Governance agreements developed by the community in 2022, the Committee completed its first year of work. Once a quarter, we hold meetings open to the full MetaDocencia team and with simultaneous interpretation in English and Spanish.

The Advisory Committee worked asynchronously on designing the Conflict of Interest Policy and the Authorship Guidelines, with valuable support from other folks on the team.

As established by our Governance, the partial renewal of the Advisory Committee is ongoing. Malvika Sharan and Laurel Ascenzi will leave their positions so that other people can have access to this decision-making body in MetaDocencia.

Thank you so much for your guidance and support during this time, Malvika and Laurel! 💐

Press 📰

External media channels enhance MetaDocencia’s reach, recognition, and potential community audience. We documented all 2023 media participations in a special page on our website (in Spanish).

2024 Wishes 🌠

Thank you very much for joining us in continuing to build scientific and technical capabilities in a responsible manner and with a local perspective. We believe that it is the only way to move towards the globally equitable production, communication, and application of scientific and technical knowledge.

Our work is based on a vision of the future in which science and technology bring development, equality, and equity to our geographies and communities.

Therefore, even in contexts of adversity and multiple restrictions, we are committed to moving forward, with perseverance, confidence, and excellence; with teamwork, learning from mistakes, and networks of cooperation and exchange willing to build collectively.

This year, we also welcomed 3 MetaDocencia babies on the team. We share their little feet with you in the image that closes this report because we feel that they reinforce our daily commitment to the future.

We kick off 2024 working with more strength and conviction than ever for those who will come, for their growth, development, and a future of open doors for all people. This is our wish for this year that has just begun ✨

We welcomed 3 babies on the team MetaDocencia grows with giant steps.

This report was made possible by NASA awards 80NSSC23K0854 (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8215455), 80NSSC23K0857 (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8250978), and 80NSSC23K0861 (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8212072), and by grants DAF2021-239366 and https://doi.org/10.37921/522107izqogv (grant DOI) from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative DAF, a fund advised by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (funder DOI 10.13039/100014989).

Did you like this publication? You can reuse it freely under CC by 4.0 licence, just cite it.

This is the citation we recommend you use to reference it: MetaDocencia Team. (2024). Community Report 2023. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10530387

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