Launching DReSA: A Portal for Digital Research Training in Australasia

DReSA is a portal for discovering digital research training events, materials, providers and trainers in Australia, New Zealand, and the region.
DRESA LAUNCH NEWS TILE

We are excited to announce the launch of Digital Research Skills Australasia (DReSA), a portal for discovering digital research training events, materials, providers and trainers in Australia, New Zealand, and the region. The portal launched at the eResearch Australasia conference on Monday 11 October 2021.

“Australian researchers need training in data and digital research skills to effectively conduct world-leading research that tackles the critical problems the world is facing.,” said Kathryn Unsworth, Manager of the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) Skilled Workforce team.

“DReSA is a central training registry for researchers and others in the sector looking to uplift their digital research skills, and for trainers to find best-practice materials and colleagues to collaborate with.”

DReSA is a critical piece of the ARDC’s National Digital Research Skills Agenda, providing skills uplift opportunities across the sector. It was developed by the National Training Registry (NTR) Working Group, which was formed at the ARDC Skills Summit in 2020. The working group partnered with ELIXIR’s TeSS platform, and an exchange of the TeSS infrastructure resulted in the development of DReSA.

DReSA received co-investment from the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre and ARDC, and is a partnership between 13 Australian research organisations: ARDC, Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, Australian BioCommons, Australian Space Data Analysis Facility, CSIRO, Deakin University, Federation University, Intersect, Monash University, National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), QCIF, University of Sydney, University of Queensland.

A portal for digital trainers and researchers

Digital research training providers and trainers can use DReSA to:

  • Promote and share training events and materials
  • Contribute to the growing catalogue of materials
  • Establish collaborative training partnerships
  • Create provider and trainer profiles.

Researchers seeking training in digital research skills can use DReSA to:

  • Find training and materials by topic, location, organiser, audience, etc.
  • Subscribe to receive new events and materials.

Research support professionals will also benefit from the training materials on DReSA.

Calling all digital research trainers

DReSA needs your help by contributing to a growing catalogue of training materials and events.

Trainers, you can log in using your AAF credentials (from your institution) to create a profile and upload events and training materials.

DReSA works by scraping relevant websites for events and training materials, but it is also supported by the training community contributing materials.

For more information on how DReSA was created and the international collaboration involved, read the announcement from Australian BioCommons.

DReSA has received investments from the ARDC and Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre (Pawsey). Pawsey and ARDC are supported by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).