Data management training in cooperation: Case Oulu x CSC

Data management is essential to keep project data in good order, to choose the right resources for data storage and computation, and to avoid unnecessary risks such as data falling into the wrong hands. In addition, good data management allows data to be made available for reuse in a way that makes the data self-explanatory. Data management is a skill that everyone working with data should understand the basics of. 

Data management is being increasingly taught in research organisations for both researchers and students. CSC wants to be involved in supporting skills development and our self-study course "Research data management" has now been available for six months. The course works as a stand-alone module, but can be freely combined with other courses, e.g. in research organisations.

This was the case in spring 2022 at the University of Oulu; they used the data management course offered by CSC as part of the doctoral course "Responsible research: publications, data, metrics and merit (2 credits)" organised by the library. The data component of the course included a self-study course in data management, a two-hour lecture and a multiple-choice assignment on the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles.

Students received a course certificate from the CSC Research Data Management course, which they were required to upload to their organisation's course platform as a mark of successful completion. Tiina Sipola, Senior Information Specialist at the University of Oulu Library Research Support, says: "Up to 40 students returned their CSC course certificate to Moodle, which was a pleasant surprise. This piece of the puzzle helped to improve the data portion of the course."

Sipola said that the self-study add-on did not raise any grumbles or questions among the students. This is likely to be explained by the brief instruction Sipola provided to students on the CSC learning environment. Sipola also wrote a small article on the data section of the doctoral course for the University of Oulu's Intranet, motivating others to learn more about the secrets of data management and to familiarise themselves with the CSC course and include the certificate in their CVs, for example.

You can study the CSC course at your own pace!

There are no pre-requisites for the CSC Data Management course, which is designed to introduce you to good practices in data management and what resources and tools are available for different stages of the research life cycle. To access the course platform (e-learn.csc.fi), you should log in with either HAKA (using your organisation's ID), ELIXIR or VIRTU. The course can be found using the keywords "RDM" or "Research data management".

The course is divided into six different sections: 1) Introduction, 2) Data management planning, 3) Data collection, documentation and organisation, 4) Computation, analysis and storage during the project, 5) Data sharing, publication and preserving, and 6) Discoverability and reuse. The sections include text, videos and slides. At the end of each section there is a quiz to test your knowledge and a certificate of completion is awarded. 

We aim to improve the course based on feedback, so please feel free to contact us with low thresholds!

Direct link to the course: "Research data management".

The course has been done as part of the ELIXIR CONVERGE project and CSC's Data Management Competence Center activities.