DRI-focussed training for research facilitators and teams (DRIFT)

Abstract

Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) has become an increasingly important part of the research lifecycle over recent years, transforming the ways in which we conduct research for the better. Across disciplines, from highly technical and specialised computational work to administrative record keeping for sustainable and reproducible research, DRI is now critical for the modern research team. It has thus become important to train researchers and people in related roles in these new DRI skills and to form different types of research collaboration, especially as we look to the future of even larger-scale research and greater interdisciplinary connections. This paper summarises the work of the DRI-focussed training for research facilitators and teams (DRIFT) project which aims to address the lack of DRI training for research support roles, to improve visibility of DRI outside of physical sciences and engineering, and to make the DRI landscape more accessible. This has been achieved by defining the role of research facilitators, surveying existing resources and using these to identify gaps and develop training curricula, building hardware demonstrators to engage a wider audience, and producing an open-source teaching platform that allows trainers to manage learner pathways. Even with the rapidly shifting digital landscape, having a firm grounding in key competencies and experience will continue to be valuable to enable the use of DRI to produce high quality research, and the benefits and impacts that it brings.