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For generic questions or inquiries related to the organisation of training events, please contact: training@mailman.eosc-hub.eu.

Best Practises for Developing Training Materials

Type

Training materials can be in various formats, include but not limited to:

• Slides: at the basic level all EOSC-hub service will be provided with one set of training materials in the form of presentation slides, e.g., ppt, pdf
• Slides with recording: e.g., ppt with recording of voice and demos
• Videos clips: e.g., camera recording of a live course etc.
• Self-study materials
• Hands-on exercises

Contents

Here we consider the slide presentation type which is the basic request for EOSC-hub services training material.

We recommend an introduction level training material should cover the following aspects:

• Basic information: title, authors, contact of authors, date, versions

• Goal: stating the learning objective of the training material

• Target audience: type of people for who this training material is relevant for

• Context:   

• Where is the service located in the EOSC-hub architecture

• The service can be used to support which phases of a research (data) lifecycle -- this would be easily understood by users

• Service providers’ information

• Development backgrounds

• Introduction: short and clear describe what the service does

• Why should users choose to use the service

• What are the problems the service tries to resolve

• How good the service is comparing to existing technology

• What benefits can the service bring to the users

• Who have already been using the service -- existing user base

• What the service does -- provide information about:

• Service functionalities and features

• Architectures and components

• Related technologies

• Definitions and Terminologies should be provided (or included as notes)

• How can users use the service

• Access interfaces

• Different access options

• Usage modes -- provide examples and use cases

• Reference:

• User guides to get started

• Help desk information

• Quiz or exercise

Slide Template

Please use EOSC-hub presentation template where is possible. Communication toolkit, including project logo, word and Powerpoint templates are available at: https://wiki.eosc-hub.eu/display/EOSC/Communications+Toolkit

Reuse Existing materials

It is also possible to reuse existing training material. However, the information should be checked and kept up-to-date.

Review

It is highly recommended that to have contents checked before publishing on an online training catalogue. 

Evaluation should consider the following aspects:

• Recommended contents are covered

• Technology description is sound, logic is clear

• Keep target audience in mind, the contents are easily understood, expressions are simple and clear

• Licence issues -- special care should be taken whether there are contents related to licence or copyright issues

It is recommended to have a lightweight review process, e.g., identify 2 reviewers :

• a technical expert

• a user expert who has experiences of working with end users

Tools

(Thanks to Baptiste for the information) some nice tools for developing training courses including: 

• Teachable https://training.robustperception.io/p/introduction-to-prometheus (quite nice, lots of features, seems to be generally praised by the users, there is also a free offer with unlimited courses but limited to one authors, and the interesting offer (5 authors) is 83 $/month)

• Thinkific: https://www.thinkific.com/(a recurrent alternative to teachable)

• Podia:  https://www.podia.com/features (a newcomer, trying to get some clients from teachable)

• Newkajabi: https://newkajabi.com/ (most expensive (and maybe just too expensive for us) but seems nice wrt features)