4TU.ResearchData’s First Community Call: Post-event survey

After our first com­mu­ni­ty call, we asked the atten­dees to com­plete a short, anony­mous sur­vey to let us know what they thought about the event. Here’s what we learned…

On Fri­day 30th April, we host­ed our first com­mu­ni­ty call based on the theme, ‘Build­ing a Cul­ture of Col­lab­o­ra­tion’. The one-hour long event wel­comed 30 atten­dees from eight research insti­tu­tions to cel­e­brate the six month anniver­sary of the 4TU.ResearchData com­mu­ni­ty.

Watch the event and read more. 

Fol­low­ing the event we asked the atten­dees to com­plete a short sur­vey to let us know what they thought about the event. Only 8 atten­dees com­plet­ed the sur­vey, how­ev­er, their respons­es have helped us gauge rep­re­sen­ta­tive views and opin­ions so that we can improve our next com­mu­ni­ty call.

Survey responses

We used the sur­vey tool, Spotler, to ask the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

How would you rate the event? 

All sur­vey respon­dents rat­ed the event as either ‘Good’, ‘Very good’ or ‘Excel­lent’.

What did you like about the event?

• The diver­si­ty of top­ics cov­ered dur­ing the call and that every aspect of the com­mu­ni­ty was men­tioned.
• The inspir­ing pre­sen­ta­tions from the com­mu­ni­ty-led work­ing groups.
• The guest lec­ture by Malvi­ka Sha­ran from the Tur­ing Way.

What did you dislike about the event? 

• Not enough time for Q&A and dis­cus­sion among par­tic­i­pants.
• The event pre­sent­ed infor­ma­tion for research data man­age­ment sup­port­ers and would be less inter­est­ing for researchers.

What did you think about the duration of the event? 

• All respon­dents report­ed that the 1 hour event was ‘about right’.

What can we improve for the next community call?

• More inter­ac­tion with the par­tic­i­pants since it is inter­est­ing to know more about the atten­dees.
• Allow the par­tic­i­pants to ask ques­tions them­selves rather than writ­ing in the chat and hav­ing ques­tions read aloud by the chair. How­ev­er, this can be chal­leng­ing under lim­it­ed time.
• Include top­ics that are more tar­get­ed towards researchers or maybe split the com­mu­ni­ty call into two parts (for research data man­age­ment sup­port­ers and researchers).
• Organ­ise a themed dis­cus­sion around a cer­tain top­ic of inter­est.

Do you have any suggestions for future themes or topics? 

• More detailed dis­cus­sions with speak­ers relat­ed to the top­ics the com­mu­ni­ty-led work­ing groups are focussing on.
• Cre­at­ing data man­age­ment stan­dards.
• Cre­at­ing inclu­sive com­mu­ni­ties across gen­der, abil­i­ty, eth­nic­i­ty, etc. and, how to have those dis­cus­sions as teams.

Lessons learned & next steps

Only 8 com­mu­ni­ty call atten­dees com­plet­ed the sur­vey out of a pos­si­ble 30. We sent the post-event sur­vey one week after the event which was too late. Next time, we will send the sur­vey as soon as the event ends so that the pro­gramme will be fresh in the atten­dees’ minds, and their opin­ions and expe­ri­ences will be clear and easy to remem­ber.

After eval­u­at­ing the sur­vey respons­es, we feel that the com­mu­ni­ty prefers to par­tic­i­pate in an inter­ac­tive event that facil­i­tates dis­cus­sion around a spe­cif­ic top­ic. This top­ic should be of inter­est to research data man­age­ment sup­port­ers and researchers. With this in mind, we are ask­ing our com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to upvote the next com­mu­ni­ty call top­ic using the poll fea­ture in our Slack work­space.

“Based on the com­mu­ni­ty call sur­vey results, upvote your favourite top­ic to be dis­cussed dur­ing the next com­mu­ni­ty call.”

• How to write FAIR and Repro­ducible Code
• Pri­va­cy and GDPR in research
• Engage­ment and Edu­ca­tion: Cre­at­ing data man­age­ment stan­dards
• Cre­at­ing inclu­sive com­mu­ni­ties (and how to have dis­cus­sions about diver­si­ty, equi­ty and inclu­sion).

As the sum­mer vaca­tion is com­ing soon, we aim for our next com­mu­ni­ty call to take place dur­ing the first week of Octo­ber. More to fol­low soon!

If you would like to help organ­ise 4TU.ResearchData’s next com­mu­ni­ty call, please get in touch! We would love to hear from you and wel­come you to the organ­is­ing com­mit­tee!

Writ­ten by Con­nie Clare (4TU.ResearchData)
Cov­er Image by Gor­don John­son from Pix­abay
Clemen­tine images by Open­Cli­part-Vec­tors from Pix­abay