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Aleksandra Nenadic

Aleksandra Nenadic

Training Team Lead

Posted on 20 June 2023

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Signpost to training resources

Posted by d.barclay on 20 June 2023 - 9:00am

People putting cogs together, RSC logoBy Aleksandra Nenadic, SSI Training Lead.

This blog post is part of the Research Software Camp: FAIR Software.

Here we list some of the free and open training resources in various languages available to researchers and Research Software Engineers to help them learn on various topics around software development, FAIR software and data, research data management and analysis, software project management, open and reproducible science, teaching and lesson development skills, and more.

This blog is an update of our previous posts - “Training resources for researchers that want to learn to code” and "Free training resources to upskill on research software topics". Note that this reference resource is not an exhaustive list - if you’d like a training resource mentioned here, please get in touch.

Note that some of these courses are being delivered at our Research Software Camp #5: FAIR Software, 19 - 30 June 2023. Check the Research Software Camp's programme for more information.

Jargon Busting Resources

If you are a beginner at developing code for your research or work, an excellent place to start is to familiarise yourself with the terminology used by the computational research communities. This is an important step as our learners come from different backgrounds, and may not be native English speakers – a term in one domain may mean something else entirely in another.

The Turing Way’s HandBook to reproducible, ethical and collaborative data science contains a very useful and comprehensive glossary of terms.

The Carpentries Glosario is another open-source and multilingual glossary of data science terms.

The Carpentries workshops often start with a jargon-busting session to make sure everyone understands the terminology used - one such example is Library Carpentry’s Jargon Busting.

Computational Skills Resources

Beginners

If you are a researcher who's begun writing code/software for research, who perhaps aspires to improve their skills and how to apply them, and perhaps needs help understanding some research software-related problems - try the following introductory resources on software development, data management and analysis and open and reproducible research.

Resource

Topic(s)

Domain(s)

Software Carpentry; Data Carpentry; Library Carpentry

R, Python, shell, Git, spreadsheets, OpenRefine, regular expressions, data analysis and visualisation, etc.

Various domains; general

The Carpentries Resources - Spanish Translations 

Translations of The Carpentries R, Python, shell, etc. courses to Spanish  

Various domains; general

Good enough scientific computing practices;

Managing academic software development

Project management using GitHub

General

Getting started with data in R

R programming language

General

Getting started with R, RStudio, and R Markdown

R programming language

General

Mastering Shiny

 

Interactive web applications with R

General


Happy Git and GitHub for the useR

 

Git, GitHub for R users

General

Building websites with Jekyll and GitHub pages

Markdown, GitHub Pages websites, Jekyll

General

Programming Historian

Python, data management and visualisation, mapping, web scraping, network analysis, etc.

Humanities; information management

R, Open Research, and Reproducibility

R, open and reproducible research

Psychology; general

Open Intro to Python

Python, open and reproducible research

Psychology; general

Introductory Statistics for Public Health

R, statistics, data analysis, data science

Public health; biomedicine, biosciences

Data Science training programme for Health and Biosciences researchers

R, Python, statistics, data analysis, data science

Public health; biomedicine, biosciences

The Turing Way Handbook

Open research, reproducibility, research (software) project design and management, guides for communication, collaboration

ethical research, Community Handbook

General

RDMkit

Data management/analysis skills, FAIR data

Biosciences

Library Carpentry: Fair Data and Software

FAIR data & software

Humanities; information management

Research Software Engineering with Python:

Building software that makes research possible

shell, Git, testing

General

ARCHER2 introductory training courses Foundational coding and data analysis skills, HPC General
Basics of software engineering skills in R for scientists Code modularity, documentation, and validation/testing General

 

Beginner to Intermediate

For researcher developers and early career Research Software Engineers who have already attended some foundational training, the following beginner-intermediate resources may be of use to further their skills.

Resource

Topic(s)

Domain(s)

The Missing Semester of Your Computer Science Education

Shell Tools and Scripting

Editors (Vim)

Data Wrangling

Command-line Environment

Version Control (Git)

Debugging and Profiling

Metaprogramming

Security and Cryptography

Potpourri

General

Choosing an open source license 

Software licencing

General

Python Data Science Handbook by Jake VanderPlas

Data science

General

Carpentries Incubator

An open repository for sharing community-developed lessons on various topics

Various domains; general

FAIR data cookbook

 

 

An online, open and live resource for the Life Sciences with recipes that help you to make and keep data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable; in one word FAIR.

 

General

Five recommendations for FAIR software

A collaboration between the Netherlands eScience Center and DANS.

General

Super Computing Wales training

HPC

General

Data Carpentry HPC lesson

HPC

Genomics

DiRAC Training

HPC

General

HPC Carpentry

HPC

General

Level Up Your Python course by Henry Schreiner

Python

General

DZone tutorials

Various topics

General

Introduction to BinderHub

Binder, BinderHub

General

Docker Introduction

Docker container, reproducible computational environments

General

Singularity Introduction

Singularity container, reproducible computational environments

General

Cloud computing intro for genomics

Cloud computing

Genomics

Byte-sized RSE 

Short interactive tutorial sessions where you can learn key skills to improve how you write and manage your research software in just 1 hour on various topics (IDEs, testing, Git, Continuous Integration, etc.)

General

ELIXIR's TeSS training portal 

Courses, events, videos, presentations, learning pathways, handbooks, etc.

Life Sciences

HDR UK training 

Health data science training and learning

Bio/health sciences

The Good Research Code Handbook

Good and reproducible research practices

General

Imperial Research Computing and Data Science training programme

Various courses on computing fundamentals and intermediate topics

General

Intermediate

Check out the resources below for more experienced RSEs and researchers developers who started working on larger, more complex research software projects and are looking at the next steps to improve their skills further to overcome challenges in such projects, particularly around collaborating on research software development in teams.

Resource

Topic(s)

Domain(s)

Beuzen & Timbers: Python Packages

Python packaging

General

Intermediate Research Software skills

Software design and development in teams, Python

General

CodingWithJamesMurphy YouTube channel

Python

General

CodeRefinery

A collection of lessons on different topics; shell, Git, testing, collaborative code development, etc.

General

Archer2 intermediate & advanced training courses

Intermediate & advanced data science, HPC, MPI, OpenMP

General

 

Teaching and Training Development Skills

If you already have an RSE skills background, and have some experience with delivering teaching or training or some prior experience in building materials for knowledge transfer or training, and aspire to improve your teaching or lesson creation skills to train others (perhaps within local research domain groups or more widely as part of a project), the following training resources are for you.

Resource

Topic(s)

Domain(s)

Diàtaxis: A systematic framework for technical documentation authoring

Writing technical documentation, how-to guides and tutorials

General

Carpentries Lesson Development

Pedagogical skills on developing effective lessons collaboratively

General

Carpentries Instructor Training

Pedagogical skills on teaching tech to novices, instructor training

General

Carpentries Lesson development study groups

Pedagogical skills on developing effective lessons collaboratively

General

CodeRefinery’s Instructor Training

Pedagogical skills on teaching tech to novices, instructor training

General

ELIXIR's Train the Trainer

Pedagogical skills on teaching tech to novices, instructor training

General

 

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