Study Groups

Welcome to Mozilla Science Lab's Study Group project! From here, we'll set you up with everything you need to start your own study group.

Wait What's a 'Study Group'

Study groups are fun, informal meetups of your friends and colleagues from around your local institution or town to share skills, stories and ideas on using code for research. The goal is to create a friendly, no-pressure environment where people can share their work, ask for help on a coding problem, and learn and work together with their peers.

It's Broken, I Need Help

If anything in these instructions doesn't work or doesn't make sense, open an issue here or email [email protected].

How to Set Up Your Own Study Group Website

Everything you need to set up your own study group website for organizing events is right here - follow the following steps and you'll be up and running soon:

1. Make yourself an account on GitHub. The free one is just fine.
2. Fork this repository. Up in the top right corner of this page, there's a button that says 'Fork'; press it! This makes your very own copy of all this stuff in your space on GitHub; when the copy is done, GitHub will automatically take you there.
3. Turn on the Issue Tracker. An issue tracker is a message board GitHub sets up for every repository; you'll use it to post information about your event and talk to your participants. To turn it on, click on 'Settings' in the right sidebar of your repo, and then click the checkbox beside 'Issues'. Now head back to your repo by clicking on the big studyGroup at the top of the page.
4. Edit the _config.yml file in your new repository. To do this, click on _config.yml, then click on the little pencil near the top right. There are instructions right in the file on how to edit it. When you're done, press the green 'Commit Changes' button at the bottom of the page.

That's it, you're done! You can see your new website at http://yourUserName.github.io/studyGroup/, where yourUserName is the user name you signed up for GitHub with. If this is your first time making a webpage on GitHub, it might take 30 minutes for things to percolate through their computers - don't worry, it's all good, check back later and your website should be up and running.

How to Launch a New Event

When you're ready to list a new event for your study group, follow these steps:

1. Make a new Issue to describe your event. Click on 'Issues' over on the right sidebar, then the green 'New Issue' button. You'll then see a form where you can give your event a title and a description - fill these out with all the relevant information; this is how your attendees will know when and where to go and what's going on, so make sure to add all the details!

2. Go to the _posts directory. It'll be at https://github.com/yourUserName/studyGroup/tree/gh-pages/_posts - or you can click on _posts in your repo.

3. Make a new file by clicking on the + sign beside _posts/ Name it like the following:

   YYYY-MM-DD-word.markdown
   

   where YYYY-MM-DD is the date of your event, and word is anything you want.

4. Cut and paste the following into your new file:

   ---
   title: Study Group Meetup
   text: a one sentence description of your event
   location: Hacky Hour Stadium
   link: https://github.com/yourUserName/studyGroup/issues/1234
   date: 2016-01-04
   
   ---
   

   Change all the fields to describe your event; make sure the link is the address of the issue you created above. When you're done, remember to click 'Commit Changes' at the bottom.

That's it! Your event is now listed on your webpage, and there's a discussion thread where people can ask questions and discuss the details.

How to Stay in Touch With Your Members

Now that you're all set up, GitHub provides several ways to stay in touch with the people involved in your study group.

• Ask users to Watch your repo. Make sure all your users click 'Watch' at the top of your repository. This way, they'll be automatically notified of all the events you post in your issue tracker.
• Use the Issue Tracker. The Issue Tracker is your public message board to make announcements, ask questions and start conversations with your members. You can find yours at https://github.com/yourUserName/studyGroup/issues.
• Gitter TBD
• Use the Mozilla Science Forum to chat with study groups worldwide. Find the forum here; every study group gets a link back to this global forum maintained by the Mozilla Science Lab to share their stories, ask questions to the wider community, and find out who's out there.