Strengthening, Not Reinventing, the Training Wheel: Sharing Open Educational Resources for Research Data Management Training

With the release of a Research Data Management (RDM) Policy by Canada’s Tri-Agency (Government of Canada, 2021), RDM and training to support RDM has become essential. All researchers who apply for grants to fund data-related research must now meet requirements including writing Data Management Plans and preparing data for deposit. In response to both this and the growing movement towards open scholarship and open data, a variety of Open Educational Resources (OER) were developed by several Canadian institutions to respond to local RDM training needs for researchers.

At the same time, national collaborative projects were developing and growing in number. Members from these groups met to discuss how to bring together these projects, raise awareness and leverage the work that’s been done and bring it to a wider audience. This led to the idea of bringing together OER creators and contributors in a webinar series that showcases the works themselves, but also touches on how these resources may be deployed locally, re-used, re-mixed, cited, and attributed. This series is hosted jointly by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada and the National Training Expert Group.

In this presentation, we will explore the lessons learned to date from this series, discuss challenges and opportunities that have arisen, and speak to future directions in national training initiatives and OER support.