In January 2018, two training-related Implementation Studies were started by ELIXIR. ELIXIR-NL plays a major role in both.
“One of the new Implementation Studies focuses on data stewardship training,” says Celia van Gelder. She is one of the leaders of the ELIXIR Training Platform. “Data stewardship is not everyday practice for researchers. It is often considered an administrative task rather than a contribution to proper research. However, data stewardship is rapidly becoming a crucial competence for life scientists. Through its Nodes and collaborators, ELIXIR harbours all expertise required to help researchers with data stewardship, but this expertise is currently hard to find. The goal of the Implementation Study is to kick-start coherent data stewardship activities and implement some first solutions for good data stewardship in ELIXIR.”
Data stewardship training and portal
Van Gelder: “There are two main activities in this Implementation Study. The first is to develop and deliver training in data stewardship; the second is to build infrastructure (a portal or wizard) to support good data stewardship. These two elements will use each other’s results, but will be run as separate, complementary projects. More investments will be needed after the completion of the Implementation Study to reach a broader audience and collect feedback on experiences.” ELIXIR-LU and ELIXIR-CZ are involved in the study in addition to ELIXIR-NL.
Learning paths
The second Implementation Study is about learning paths. Van Gelder: “With the growing number of life science training resources currently available through TeSS, it may be a struggle to choose the most relevant resource matching the user’s learning needs and level. This Implementation Study aims to identify competency frameworks that are relevant to the ELIXIR user community, and refine or expand them as needed. We want to derive a set of core competencies and a curriculum for bioinformatics and data science. In addition, we will map ELIXIR training resources to such competencies and expose this information through TeSS. And we will build learning paths for selected use cases and make them available in TeSS, to help guide users in moving from one competency level to another by following such learning paths.”
Workshop
Van Gelder: “As a first step in the Learning Paths study, Allegra Via (ELIXIR-IT), Vera Matser (BioExcel), Gabriella Rustici (ELIXIR-UK), and me are currently organising a workshop on bridging bioinformatics and data science competency frameworks, and their application to ELIXIR Training. This workshop will take place on 5-6 April 2018 in Amsterdam. Our collaborators in GOBLET, EDISON, H3AbioNet, CODATA-RDA, and BD2K have already confirmed their participation.”
About Implementation Studies
Implementation Studies are short technical projects to inform future service development, drive standards adoption, and connect ELIXIR’s 21 Nodes. The projects are funded through the budget of the ELIXIR Hub and form part of ELIXIR’s ongoing activities in a particular Platform or Use Case. They are proposed by Platforms, agreed with the ELIXIR Heads of Nodes committee, and approved by the ELIXIR Board. Read more.