Microlectures on ‘Research Data Management’: The Bachelor’s edition

1. ‘How do I get your data?’ pro­vides infor­ma­tion about data stor­age, data access and shar­ing and per­son­al data.
2. ‘How do I use your data?’ pro­vides infor­ma­tion about data doc­u­men­ta­tion, data for­mats, file­names and direc­to­ries. 
3. ‘How do I trust your data?’ pro­vides infor­ma­tion about data pro­cess­ing and ver­sion con­trol.
4. ‘How do I build on your data?’ pro­vides infor­ma­tion about data repos­i­to­ries and archiv­ing. 
5. ‘What am I allowed to do with your data?’ pro­vides infor­ma­tion about licens­es and ethics.

Her microlec­tures are avail­able on vimeo and the slides are avail­able for down­load on Zen­o­do.

Why Bachelor’s students?

Judith shares her moti­va­tions for cre­at­ing a microlec­ture series for Bachelor’s degree stu­dents. 

“All ear­ly career researchers should have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn about good RDM prac­tice. Cur­rent­ly, most of the RDM learn­ing mate­ri­als are tai­lored towards edu­cat­ing PhD stu­dents, how­ev­er, Bachelor’s stu­dents can also ben­e­fit from learn­ing about how to appro­pri­ate­ly han­dle per­son­al data and back up their data to avoid loss­es.”

She adds that learn­ing about good RDM prac­tice isn’t just applic­a­ble to sci­en­tists but ben­e­fits stu­dents from all aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­plines and even plays an impor­tant role through­out dai­ly life.

“Whether stu­dents pur­sue a career in acad­e­mia or move to indus­try after their stud­ies, they will sure­ly have to man­age infor­ma­tion and even per­son­al data at some point in their careers. It’s there­fore impor­tant they gain the rel­e­vant skills and knowl­edge to help them suc­ceed.”

Judith explains that dri­ving the cul­ture change toward FAIR data and Open Sci­ence starts with teach­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of pro­fes­sion­als.  

“Edu­cat­ing stu­dents about how to man­age their data at the begin­ning of their career means that they become aware of what can go wrong and learn how to avoid RDM prob­lems ear­ly on.”

Starting from scratch

As there were no RDM learn­ing mate­ri­als avail­able for Bachelor’s stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty, Judith began by cre­at­ing full-length lec­tures that were lat­er trans­formed into five minute microlec­tures.

“First, I decid­ed on the lec­ture mate­r­i­al con­tent and for­mat by mak­ing a les­son plan with some ref­er­ence slides as if the lec­tures would be deliv­ered as part of an in-per­son course,” says Judith. 

“The next step was to con­dense the infor­ma­tion into a series of short and engag­ing microlec­tures that are infor­ma­tive and fun at the same time.”

She adds that the most dif­fi­cult part was select­ing the most impor­tant infor­ma­tion to present in the microlec­tures. 

“There’s an abun­dance of infor­ma­tion avail­able about RDM which can be over­whelm­ing for stu­dents. There­fore, I focussed on five key ques­tions which formed the basis of the microlec­ture series, and sort­ed and grouped infor­ma­tion accord­ing to these top­ics,” she says.

After cre­at­ing the microlec­ture pre­sen­ta­tion slides in Pow­er­Point, Judith wrote a script which was checked by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Twente’s data stew­ards; Mar­i­an­na Avetisyan, Simone Fricke, Zafer Özturk and Qian Zhang.

Getting creative with characters

The entire process, from the incep­tion of the idea to record­ing the final prod­uct, took Judith around two weeks to com­plete. Her pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence of cre­at­ing microlec­tures on ‘infor­ma­tion lit­er­a­cy’ helped her cre­ate pro­fes­sion­al microlec­tures that are clear, con­cise, and easy to fol­low in a short space of time. 

“This was such a fun project that real­ly allowed me to har­ness my cre­ativ­i­ty over the sum­mer. Due to the lack of train­ing mate­r­i­al for Bachelor’s stu­dents, I was start­ing with a ‘blank can­vas’ with no lim­i­ta­tions,” she adds.

The roll out

Cur­rent­ly, Research Sup­port Coor­di­na­tors are liais­ing with Uni­ver­si­ty fac­ul­ty and pro­gramme direc­tors to deter­mine how and when to intro­duce the microlec­ture series in Bachelor’s degree pro­grammes in order to best com­ple­ment their var­i­ous mod­ules and top­ics. 

Judith empha­sis­es the impor­tance of feed­back dur­ing the roll out process.

“I’m very curi­ous to learn what stu­dents and oth­er data sup­port pro­fes­sion­als think about these microlec­tures. I’m explor­ing ways to col­lect feed­back from stu­dents,” she says. 

She also remarks that these train­ing mate­ri­als are a work in progress that will require reg­u­lar updates as the RDM land­scape evolves and Uni­ver­si­ty poli­cies change. 

“Not only will we revise these microlec­tures to ensure they’re up-to-date, but we’ll add new ones to the mix about dif­fer­ent research top­ics of inter­est as they arise. What’s more, since we now have a les­son plan and ref­er­ence slides for full lec­tures, it will be good to pro­vide in-per­son edu­ca­tion for Bachelor’s stu­dents in the future.”- Watch this space! 

With this in mind, Judith is already col­lab­o­rat­ing with her col­league, Zafer, to pro­duce their next microlec­ture on ‘FAIR data’!

For more infor­ma­tion, to pro­vide your feed­back, or to learn how you can adapt and reuse this microlec­ture series, please feel free to con­tact Judith. 

Writ­ten by Con­nie Clare (4TU.ResearchData)
Edit­ed by Judith Brands (Uni­ver­si­ty of Twente)
Cov­er image by Gillian Cal­li­son from Pix­abay