Our Themes

Here we give a little more information on what each loosely defined theme will focus on. We have four themes:

• Delivery Styles and Techniques
• Development of Training Materials
• Policy, Culture, and Resourcing
• Developing RSEs to deliver training

Delivery Styles and Techniques

There are many ways to deliver effective training, from in person lectured material to remote self directed learning. This theme encourages participants to share their experience in delivering training in different styles. Participants are encouraged to reflect on their pedagogy and think about how they can use others experience to augment their own practice.

Development of Training Materials

Developing quality training materials is a monumental challenge. There are quoted figures of one hour of delivered material taking ~50 hours to develop. Such an investment of time requires we understand what good materials look like and how we can improve our development practice. Participants should be ready to share their experience of developing materials and examples of their materials. Reflection on the experiences of others that could compliment their development styles is encouraged.

Policy, Culture, and Resourcing

A large portion of training is championed by committed individuals, receiving funding, recognition, and time to devote to this training is a systemic issue. This mimics the early challenges of research software engineering, we will look at the ways we can influence policy to achieve:

• Recognition for the importance of quality training delivered at the correct time.
• Time and funding for the development of training and trainers
• Acknowledgement of the effort for creating training materials and their value to intuitions and the UK research infrastructure.

Participants should share experiences of successes and failures in getting recognition on the above topics. The result should be actionable items that can be formed into a coordinated policy push on UK higher education to achieve these goals.

Developing RSEs to deliver training

We the RSEs are at the heart of all the above themes. To be able to deliver quality training we must continually improve and adapt our practices as well as train other RSEs to train. This theme looks at how we can best develop ourselves and inspire other RSEs to get into training. Participants should come ready to discuss resources and ideas that have had a significant impact on their practice. Participants should also be ready to discover new ideas a resources that can develop them further and that they can share onwards.