This page refers to the Training Platform's work between 2014 and 18. For the Platform's current programme see the Training Platform main page.
The ELIXIR Training Platform was established to develop a training community spanning all ELIXIR member states (see the list of Training Coordinators). It aims to strengthen national training programmes, grow bioinformatics capacity and competence across Europe, and empower researchers to use ELIXIR's services and tools.
The Platform:
establishes and implements best practices in bioinformatics training,
supports training providers across Europe in developing and delivering training to developers, researchers and trainers,
builds a sustainable training infrastructure.
What the Training Platform does
Builds an ELIXIR training infrastructure
Goals:
To assess bioinformatics training quality, good practice and impact
Lead: Gabriella Rustici (ELIXIR-UK), Sarah Morgan (ELIXIR-UK)
To develop eLearning resources and deliver training through them
Lead: Brane Leskosek (ELIXIR-SI)
Activities:
Providing ELIXIR with a mechanism to capture and report on the impact of its training programme on the European and international level.
Harmonising standards, metrics and the sharing of training materials across ELIXIR Nodes. This involves developing good practice guidelines and a training evaluation system, in collaboration with GOBLET.
Developing well structured training routes – through the use of workflows – embedded in online resources for cost-effective, time-efficient, impactful training.
To develop TeSS as an active forum for aggregating, disseminating and coordinating information on ELIXIR’s training activities/materials, including those relating to ELIXIR’s services.
To enable the storage of training material online (e.g. the e-Learning platform provided by ELIXIR-SI).
To create scalable training materials, which will be made available to trainers, developers and users.
trainers
Leads: Allegra Via (ELIXIR-IT), Sarah Morgan (ELIXIR-UK)
Activities:
Train the Developer and Infrastructure Operator programmes:
Mapping the competences across ELIXIR Nodes and analysing training needs. The Platform is doing this through surveys, discussions at the annual ELIXIR All Hands Meeting, and consultation with the ELIXIR Technical Coordinators Group.
Providing targeted training based on the mapped needs. This training is delivered through face-to-face workshops and webinars.
Building a virtual community to ease the communication between developers and infrastructure operators. See the Virtual Coffee Room.
Train the Researcher programme:
Training the following groups of researchers: life scientists, computational biologists, and bioinformaticians engaged in marine metagenomics, in plant genotype-phenotype interactions, in rare disease and in biological sample collection research.
To ensure these groups become independent and savvy users of the ELIXIR resources, training is given in scientific programming, statistics, HPC, ontologies, workflows, data curation and annotation, as well as in the effective use of standards and FAIR data.
Train the Trainer programme:
Building a highly skilled and coherent community of training instructors by developing training capacity in the Nodes with the train the trainer (TtT) framework.
