The Research Data Mantra project at the University of Edinburgh aims to develop online training materials for PhD students and early career researchers on research data management across social science, clinical psychology, and geoscience. It consists of eight interactive units covering topics such as data management plans, organizing data, and data protection, with ongoing user testing and content authoring. Lessons learned highlighted challenges in content creation, copyright issues, and ensuring consistency in training materials.

1. Research Data MANTRA Robin Rice, Ҫ una Ekmekcioglu, Stuart Macdonald JISC Managing Research Data (International) Workshop, Birmingham, 28-29 March 2011

2. Project overview Partnership between The Data Library in Information Services and The Institute for Academic Development, at the University of Edinburgh Grounded in three disciplinary contexts: social science, clinical psychology and geoscience Aims to develop online interactive training materials for PhD students and early career researchers that will Raise awareness of the key issues related to research data management Provide guidelines for good practice

3. Online learning materials Eight units with activities, scenarios and videos Research data explained Data management plans Organising data File formats and transformation Documentation and metadata Storage and security Data protection, rights and access Preservation, sharing and licensing Four data handling practicals SPSS, NVivo, R, ArcGIS Xerte Online Toolkits – University of Nottingham

4. Progress to date Needs assessment Completed Authoring content Completed for five units Data handling practicals Outlines ready for all, SPSS practical is ready for internal evaluation Internal feedback on completed units Finalised User testing – five students Scheduled for early April

5. Next… Video productions April - June Evaluation of data handling practicals May User testing – complete module June Final modifications in the light of user feedback July

6. Next… Learning materials to be deposited with an open licence in JorumOpen and Xpert August Learning materials to be embedded in three participating postgraduate programmes and made available through Transkills programme for use by all postgraduate students and early career researchers Next academic year

7. Lessons learned Time – underestimated! Authoring content – not an easy task... Re-using existing materials vs writing from scratch Copyright – images, videos Consistency in style, terminology, Data handling practicals Setting up Xerte Online Toolkits (XOT) on the server Security issues Issues with the software

8. Lessons learned Working with a default XOT template Limitations of the template Finding volunteers for user testing – not easy! Issues with data handling practicals Tension between data handling and data analysis in terms of actual content Ensuring clear explanation of software specific jargon/technical terminology/process-specific language Retaining consistency across four data handling practicals in terms of look and feel, flow, content, audience

9. Thank you  Project website http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/data-library-projects/mantra Project wiki https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/mantra/Research+Data+Mantra+project+wiki Institute for Academic Development http://www.iad.ed.ac.uk/ Xerte – open source elearning http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte/toolkits.htm Contact: Robin Rice – R.Rice@ed.ac.uk