Training Policy
NeIC Training Policy
Scope
The NeIC Training Policy is relevant for training events (partially) covered by NeIC funds (e.g. for courses within the course mobility enhancement part of the Ratatosk training programme or by other workshops (co-)funded by NeIC. Those training events are hereafter referred to collectively as “courses”, or a “course” (singular). The NeIC Training Policy is also intended to act as a continuation of corresponding (national) training policies while providing useful guidelines for Nordic training efforts in general. The Pool Competencies working group has overall responsibility for this training policy, its interpretation and application. Revision should be covered as part of the responsibility.
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The course should be announced in the common Nordic training calendar provided by NeIC, currently at https://neic.no/training/.
Training material and re-usability
All intellectual property in the course should be treated appropriately during conduct of the course as well as afterwards if it can remain available for later use. It is desirable that the courses include webinars, be available through streaming for remote access, and be recorded for offline access. When possible, the course content should be maintained in a repository, e.g. GitHub, and be freely available under an open access or open source license. When permissible, links to the available course content should be included with the event in the training calendar and showed at https://neic.no/training/. To open up the course for Nordic re-use even further it is also recommended to include a train-the trainer component.
Allocation of seats reserved for Nordic participants
Some part (e.g. 5-10%) of the seats should be reserved in advance for (not national) Nordic participants and could then be released again to local participants a certain time (typically two weeks) before the event starts.
Feedback and evaluations
Feedback strengthens teaching and learning, ultimately improving the courses offered. NeIC highly encourages such feedback loops. Reimbursement of course costs might be bound to the receipt of the evaluation questionnaire plus a short report.
Recommendations and Explanations (Outside the Policy)
Purpose
The goal of training is to raise competence in staff and end users in order to achieve more efficient operations and use of resources. NeIC's interest in training is focused on e-science and e-infrastructure skills among scientists and e-infrastructure personnel in the Nordic region, for the purpose of raising the quality of the scientific output overall.
More Nordic-oriented training events also have a networking effect, they act as forming venues where participants can meet to form new relationships and to recognize, create, or act upon scientific or technological opportunities, share information and seek potential partners for ventures. NeIC can help to increase the impact and audiences of the training offerings provided by the national organisations in the Nordic countries.
Types of training
Within the broad concept of training there is a distinction between courses which give academic credits, and other types of training. This would also include best practice guides and online training material. NeIC takes an interest in all types of training that can further the interests of the end users and science and focuses on working with the e-infrastructure providers.
NeIC training calendar
NeIC has set up a world-readable calendar where NeIC and stakeholders can share information on upcoming training events. Training coordinators from stakeholder organizations are invited to add information on their upcoming training events to this calendar. The information is shared in this calendar for the purposes of coordination of efforts, and for advertising the training events to potential interested participants. The calendar can be accessed or displayed in a variety of ways, including as normal text on other websites. Training coordinators can also choose to include those events that they believe are of interest in their regular training announcement emails to their stakeholders.
For the sake of simplicity, the information in this calendar is constrained to the bare necessities such as title, time and place, and then link to further information, for example at the training organizer's own webpages for the event. This calendar should not be seen as an authoritative source of information or as overruling information made available elsewhere, especially in regards to rules of admittance or costs, as such decisions often vary depending on practicalities that NeIC cannot and does not wish to dictate over, such as requirements from other funders of the specific training event.
The NeIC training calendar shows upcoming training events that are either arranged by NeIC or partners, or simply of interest to NeIC and its stakeholders. Please refer to the official website for each training for the most accurate and up-to-date information, for example on admittance, costs, etc.
Calendar ID and more details are found at: https://wiki.neic.no/wiki/Training
Enhancing return of investments
Running a good training event requires investments in preparations of training materials, teaching expertise, announcements, logistics, venue, etc. One simple means of improving the returns of these investments is to make the training events viable beyond a National scale, for example through collaboration with training coordinators in stakeholder organizations and to reach potential interested participants who might otherwise not learn of the training event.
The #NeIC training calendar is an attempt to facilitate this outreach. The courses and events advertised in the it should have some part (typically 5-10%) of the seats reserved for Nordic participants and released again to local participants a certain time (e.g. 2-4 weeks) before the event starts to allow for travel arrangements.