Workstream 1: Training

Lead

The lead for this workstream in 2022-23 is Tom Stafford, University of Sheffield.

Aim and objectives

We will enable UK institutions to improve the skills of their researchers in open research practices via consistent, high-quality and harmonised training, and sharing a UKRN collection of training material.

We will do this by:

• implementing a Train-the-Trainer programme, where training leads from each of the consortium members will receive training (delivered by programme partners and others)
• having those training leads deliver a range of local courses on open research practices in their own institution
• curating existing training resources, identify gaps in training materials, and develop (with our partners and others) new materials to address those gaps
• publishing the resources collection with permissive licenses, and disseminating them to the sector

Approach

Practically, the steps we are taking are as follows:

Content

We are building a UKRN training syllabus and resources catalogue. So far, we have consulted UKRN institutions on the materials / training they currently use, which might be more widely available, and on their effectiveness. We have also consulted UKRN institutions on priorities and local gaps in training resources / provision.

Our next steps are to analyse this information, alongside the findings from the open research survey of active researchers in workstream 2 (evaluation). From this analysis, and discussions with our programme training partners and others such as HDR-UK and OpenAIRE, we will generate the first iteration of a syllabus and training catalogue. We aim to have this done by August 2023 and to share both via a dedicated, interoperable website (see workstream 3).

We expect our syllabus to include topics not covered in our training catalogue and so, by August 2023 we also plan to have identified those gaps and ways to fill them. That work will continue until August 2024.

Capacity

We are building UKRN training capacity by working with partner institutions to identify and put in place both a cohort of trainers and the institutional support they need to deliver training to researchers for the remainder of the programme. We are currently having discussions with partner institutions about the diverse ways in which this might be done in each one.  The aim is to have 10 trainers in each of the 18 core partner institutions by mid 2023, though we hope to increase both of those numbers. We will provide a wide variety of train-the-trainer sessions to the trainers.  Workstream 2 will develop common evaluation tools during 2023, and we will support institutions as they deploy those, to assess the changes resulting from the training and help us refine the training and materials available to the trainers. We will support this cohort as a training community of practice. We aim to train 2700 researchers by the end of the programme.