[Open-access] Introducing OSTI: How does graduate training in open science work in practice?

[Sophie Kershaw]

Hi everyone,

Apologies in advance for any cross-posting!

Some of you may have been following the progress of my Panton Fellowship
work over the past year, the main focus of which was establishing a
graduate training scheme in open science, the *Open Science Training
Initiative (OSTI)*. There have been some exciting developments with the
course in recent weeks and we're really close to releasing the first full
set of course materials for others to use in their own teaching to train
young academics in open science and data-centric/digital research
methodologies, so I thought I'd update you all on progress. If you're
interested in hearing about how the course works in practice, then *scroll
down for a download link to the post-pilot report!*

*What is OSTI?*
The OSTI scheme is a teaching pattern and series of mini-lectures, designed
to transform existing subject-specific graduate courses in the sciences to
foster open working practices and scientific reproducibility. Its main
features include:

   - dynamic teaching model of Rotation Based Learning,
   - hands-on application of licensing, data management and data analysis
   techniques, building students knowledge of, and confidence in using, these
   approaches;
   - daily lectures and exercises in key subjects including "Content, Code
   & Data Licensing", "The Changing Face of Publication" and "Data Management
   Planning" accompany the main component of research time in the timetable,
   providing students with knowledge they can then consolidate through
   application to their research.


*Open Science Training in Practice - download the report now!*
After many months of hard work and analysis, the post-pilot report on OSTI
was released last Saturday and is now available for download from the OSTI
website, via http://www.opensciencetraining.com/content.php. The report
draws on a broad range of perspectives from the student cohort, the
auxiliary demonstrators and the course leader. A curated data set to
accompany the report will be appearing on the OSTI site very soon and
lecture movies from the pilot initiative have been appearing on the site
over the past week. Keep checking back over the coming weeks as more
content and downloads become available.

*Where can I get course materials?*
The official set of course materials will be appearing on our GitHub
repository <https://github.com/StilettoFiend/OpenScienceTraining> over the
coming weeks - these are currently being tweaked based on the feedback we
received and I can't wait for others to fork the project and create other
versions of the course as well.

Please feel free to get in touch with me if you'd like to hear more about
OSTI, or have any comments, questions or suggestions. If we're going to
encourage uptake of Open working practices in the sciences, we need to
start training our researchers in these approaches *now*. If you think
there's an opening at your institution for this kind of approach, then I
would love to hear from you!

Thanks for your attention - best wishes,

Sophie
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-access/attachments/20130513/fc49dde8/attachment.html>