9.3 Designing and Delivering an International MOOC on Research Data Management
Creators: name: Helen Tibbo, Robin Rice
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2016
Subjects: research, data management, MOOC, design

description: This paper will introduce the Research Data Management MOOC (Massively Open Online Course), a product of the CRADLE project–Curating Research Assets and Data using Lifecycle Education (cradle.web.unc.edu) – and the University of Edinburgh’s MANTRA (Research Data Management Training; datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra) programme. CRADLE is an IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services) funded project undertaken by the School of Information and Library Science and the Odum Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. CRADLE is partnering with MANTRA to produce a MOOC that is relevant to librarians, archivists, and other information professionals tasked with research data management as well as to researchers themselves. This is the first international MOOC on data management and curation. In 2005, the National Science Board in the US observed that ‘…data scientists [including] librarians [and] archivists… have the responsibility to design and implement education and outreach programs that make the benefits of data collections and digital information science available to the broadest possible range of researchers, educators, students, and the general public.’ Since then, research funders world-wide have asked grant applicants to provide data management plans (DMPs) with their proposals and scholarly journals are now asking authors to deposit their data when they submit articles for publication. Many researchers have found these requirements difficult to meet as they have not been trained in research data management (RDM) and have turned to librarians and data archivists for assistance. The need for research data management plans and archiving of data has been a wake-up call for researchers and librarians alike. Libraries have begun to position themselves as solution centres for university-wide RDM awareness raising, training, and service provision. This is opening up an opportunity to engage with researchers ‘upstream’ in the research process (during pre-publication activity), but to be successful, library staff must be knowledgeable about RDM. MANTRA has been providing RDM training materials to both librarians and researchers since 2011, by optimising the MANTRA materials for researchers themselves, and creating study materials in the form of the DIY RDM Training Kit for Librarians. In June 2015, MANTRA joined forces with the CRADLE team to develop curriculum for an international audience on data management and deliver it in the form of a Coursera MOOC to be offered through both institutions’ shopfronts starting 1st March, 2016 as an ‘on-demand’ (self-paced) course. The MOOC, ‘Research Data Management and Sharing’ (www.coursera.org/learn/research-data-management-and-sharing), consists of five weeks’ worth of lessons, delivered mainly by video lecture: Understanding Research Data, Data Management Planning, Working with Data, Sharing Data, and Archiving Data. While the course is free, a certificate of completion can be earned for a small fee. By the time of the LIBER Annual Conference we will be able to report on our experience delivering this MOOC to an international audience that includes both information professionals and researchers. We will have three months of data to analyse regarding demographic characteristics of the participants, use of the five modules, forum participation, and queries from the participants. <strong>Helen Tibbo</strong> has been an educator for over 30 years. She earned an MA in American Studies, an MLS and a PhD in Library and Information Science. In 1989, she joined the Faculty of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she taught reference and online retrieval. She recognized the growing need for students to be trained in handling digital materials and the lack of resources for that training, and so in 2000 she started teaching Digital Preservation and Access, one of the first college courses of its kind in the world. Today she is a leader in training future digital curators and information technologists. <strong>Robin Rice</strong> is Data Librarian at EDINA and Data Library, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Service Operations Manager of the University’s Research Data Service, a composite of data-related services delivered across Information Services for the University, including the Research Data MANTRA training course and Edinburgh DataShare repository. She has over twenty years of experience working as a data librarian in both American and British universities, and a Master’s degree in Library and Information Studies.