Speaker
Bruce Becker
(South African National Grid)
Description
Research practices are getting a radical makeover, in part thanks to the power of the internet and the tools it provides, and in part due to a growing demand for accountability in research (e.g., reproducibility and data provenance). In order to achieve this, global policies are emerging at different levels that include some aspect of ‘Open Research’, ‘Open Scholarship’, ‘Open Education’ or ‘Open Science’. In addition, research evaluation frameworks and models are under pressure to include more diverse outputs, behaviour, and practices that go beyond traditional methods of counting publications, citations, and patents. However, many universities and research institutes are failing to support researchers in these crucial matters, in terms of both training and providing incentives to effectively make their research more accessible, reproducible and transparent. This begs the question of whether current graduate students will be prepared to appropriately perform research to the high standards of a 21st century research environment.
Open Science is about increased rigour, dissemination, accountability, reproducibility, and also long-term efficiency. It is based on principles of inclusion, fairness, and sharing, and it extends across most domains of research. However, there are numerous socio-technological barriers yet to be overcome. Although technological solutions are maturing, cultural or ideological change is frequently the bottleneck. This bottleneck could be widened by teaching new entrants into research and academia to adopt transparent research practices. Expanding the awareness about Open Science could drive changes in the scientific community to promote reproducible and transparent science.
We have previously proposed the development of an Open Science Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), designed to equip students, teachers and researchers with the knowledge and the skills they need in order to participate in an Open Science environment. It is bringing together the efforts and resources of hundreds of researchers who have volunteered their time and expertise to creating a curriculum, aimed at making research more efficient and transparent. The MOOC is aimed at researchers at all levels, but especially students at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. The content of the MOOC is distilled into 10 core modules that complement existing aspects of research training programs. Each module will comprise a complete range of resources including videos, research articles, dummy datasets and code to ensure that students are equipped to perform high quality research. ‘Homework’ tasks also reinforce learning by doing.
We describe the evolving context of the initiative, and the progress made so far. We focus as well on issues such as technology stack, community engagement strategies, collaboration with other initiatives curriculum development and sustainability. We propose that this activity can support the development of the European Open Science Cloud, and provides a robust and open model for developing the skills of both researcher and educator in the 21st century.
| Topic Area | Data science and skills |
|---|---|
| Type of abstract | Presentation (15 minutes) |
Primary author
Bruce Becker
(South African National Grid)
