Best resources for teaching/learnign GitLab for non-technical users

Please help me spread the word about GitLab (for Open Science)

TL;DR: Could you point to the best resources for people to learn/teach/introduce GitLab to non-technical users?

I’m submitting my request through this forum by suggestion of Mansour Mboup.

I’m writing to see if you could point me to the best resources for introducing non-technical users to GitLab.

More specifically, I’m going to be giving a workshop on open science, and I’m going to make the case for using cutting edge tools such as GitLab for open science.
I know some people are pushing for the same or related reforms, but to the best of my knowledge DevOps practices are, understandably, not the standard in psychological research.

One of the goals of my workshop is to show the tremendous potential these tools could have for open science.

Importantly, the audience is going to be comprised of students, and possibly more senior researchers, working on psychology and related fields.
Some might have started using the R programming language to analyze their
datasets, but in general they can be described as non-programmers/non-technical users.
Since, I’m a Linux geek and my idea of user-friendly software is one with a good CLI, I’m afraid I might not know the best resources to direct them to.

Could you please be so kind as to suggest what are the best resources to teach non-technical people about GitLab, and user-friendly GUI’s like the web IDE?

My greatest thanks to everyone involved in making GitLab as amazing as it is.

P.S: I did not post this on the GitLab for education topic because my institution has not applied for that offering. Maybe my workshop could be a step towards making the case for them applying, but as it stands we’re going to be using the free GitLab SaaS offering.

Hi there!

Thanks for your question; I appreciate you looking for ways to spread the word about GitLab to non-technical users and majors! I’m the Education Evangelist and this is part of my job as well!

First, I’ll point to this blog post from Valerie Silverthorn. It’s a good place to start for non-technical folks to see how they can get started.

I streamed a bit when I first got to GitLab going through the issues that are included in the “Learn GitLab” Project that comes with new accounts. I turned those streams into a single video; it’s a walkthrough of some important terms, UI, and other aspects of using GitLab for first-timers.

There’s also a section of the docs dedicated to learning more about GitLab. Each of these is helpful for different people at different levels. One of the easiest-to-understand tools on GitLab is issues; part of your workshop could focus on how issues make it easier for collaboration on files, data, and work by having a single place for users to discuss and make changes to text and markdown files, as well as actual data and scripts needed for open science.

On to your open science work, we’re doing a lot with that as well! @chupy wrote this blog all about how DevOps is transforming science. We’re finding more and more people are realizing the benefit of a single platform for scientific processes. Here is a course with some information about using Open Science with GitLab (there’s even a section about GitLab and R, with a helpful primer on Git as well.)

Finally, since you mentioned psychology, here are the results of an explore global search for psychology topics on GitLab to show projects that may be related.

I hope some of this helps, please feel free to ask any more questions or reach out to me directly about any other assistance I can offer. Thank you again for the post and the passion!

Pj

@Joao-O-Santos by the way, have you heard that we just introduced a GitLab CLI?

Put glab at your fingertips with the GitLab CLI | GitLab

Hi, @PjMetz!

What an amazing and complete reply!
Thank you so, so much!
I was getting a bit frustrated with the replies I got from other channels but this reply more than makes up for it, and then some!

I’d like to mention you @PjMetz in the acknowledgments slide for being so helpful.
What name/s, handles, titles, etc. would you like me to include when I mention you?

First, I’ll point to this blog post from Valerie Silverthorn. It’s a good place to start for non-technical folks to see how they can get started.

It’s very approachable read, I’ll try to include this as well as the other references you kindly provided.

I streamed a bit when I first got to GitLab going through the issues that are included in the “Learn GitLab” Project that comes with new accounts. I turned those streams into a single video; it’s a walkthrough of some important terms, UI, and other aspects of using GitLab for first-timers.

Once again amazing work and thanks for the reference.
I’m afraid it will still seem too foreign to the audience, who might have never heard of git, VS Code or any such developer tools.

There’s also a section of the docs dedicated to learning more about GitLab.

Thanks for that reference as well, I’ll try to link it.
I’m a bit afraid that it offers too many choices and my audience might get lost but once they’re motivated and grounded enough it really is an amazing reference.

On to your open science work, we’re doing a lot with that as well! @chupy wrote this blog all about how DevOps is transforming science. We’re finding more and more people are realizing the benefit of a single platform for scientific processes. Here is a course with some information about using Open Science with GitLab (there’s even a section about GitLab and R, with a helpful primer on Git as well.)

Those are amazing references, I couldn’t have asked for better!
Maybe I should have mentioned this, but I’m working on a project template for using devops for science—SciOps
The project is still in its infancy as its just something I put together quickly as a proof of concept, but I’m hoping to develop it further.

Finally, since you mentioned psychology, here are the results of an explore global search for psychology topics on GitLab to show projects that may be related.

As of right now the search doesn’t seem to turn up that many results.
Ironically or not the first one—moc—is a draft for a book I’m writing on how to use R for psychological data analysis.

I hope some of this helps, please feel free to ask any more questions or reach out to me directly about any other assistance I can offer. Thank you again for the post and the passion!

Clearly, it is I who must thank you for going through all this trouble in replying.
You’ve been incredibly helpful and kind.
These are still a very rough work in progress but the slides for my workshop are available as a GitLab Pages’ page.

Best regards

Regarding glab, I did start using it recently.
I think it has room to be improved but its a great tool already.
Yesterday I started experimenting with bugwarrior+taskwarrior and together with glab they allow me to never leave the terminal

I’d like to mention you @PjMetz in the acknowledgments slide for being so helpful.
What name/s, handles, titles, etc. would you like me to include when I mention you?

Thank you so much!!
Pj Metz, Education Evangelist, GitLab. @PjMetz on GitLab and @Metzinaround on Twitter and other socials.

I’ll be checking out your slides! If possible, I’d love to chat more sometime about your work, perhaps in the new year. I’ll DM you on here to see about us connecting more.