Enhance Your Research Data Management Skills Through an Innovative Online Course

The Australian Research Data Commons’ (ARDC)  popular online research data training course, 23 (research data) things, has been updated and is now on GitHub.

23 (research data) things is a digital, self-paced course designed for anyone who wants to learn more about research data, including researchers and research support professionals.

The self-directed training provides an excellent grounding in research data management. Because it is flexibly designed with self-contained sections, users can decide which topic or topics they are interested in, then select and work through them at their own pace.

The content was originally produced in 2016 by the Australian National Data Service (ANDS), which was based on a L4RD group at the Research Data Alliance. The project was noted for encouraging workplace-based community groups and open discussion forums to broaden access for individuals.

Along with undergoing an in-depth revision and update by a team from ARDC, 23 (research data) things is now a collaborative project and repository. It resides on GitHub, a popular platform for sharing open source software and codes. Users can submit changes for consideration, comment on other submissions, repurpose and rebrand the content for their own use.

“This project was a great opportunity to practice using Github for collaboration and become more familiar with forking repositories and submitting pull requests,” said Liz Stokes, Senior Research Data Skills Specialist at ARDC and a member of the updating team.

“Sharing training materials for research support professionals to reuse for their own purposes gave me empathy for researchers who share data. When you are preparing to share research data or training materials, you think differently about your decisions on documentation, licensing and attribution,” she said.

An archived, citable version is also available on Zenodo, which allows contributors to be recognised and identified by their ORCiDs.