Posted on behalf of Sophie Kershaw, one of our Panton Fellows 2012/13, recapping her work training the next generation in the art of open science. Over to you Sophie:

Some of you may have been following the progress of my Panton Fellowship work over the past year, the main focus of which was establishing a graduate training scheme in open science, the Open Science Training Initiative (OSTI). There have been some exciting developments with the course in recent weeks and we’re really close to releasing the first full set of course materials for others to use in their own teaching to train young academics in open science and data-centric/digital research methodologies, so I thought I’d update you all on progress. If you’re interested in hearing about how the course works in practice, then scroll down for a download link to the post-pilot report!

What is OSTI?
The OSTI scheme is a teaching pattern and series of mini-lectures, designed to transform existing subject-specific graduate courses in the sciences to foster open working practices and scientific reproducibility. Its main features include:

• dynamic teaching model of Rotation Based Learning,
• hands-on application of licensing, data management and data analysis techniques, building students knowledge of, and confidence in using, these approaches;
• daily lectures and exercises in key subjects including “Content, Code & Data Licensing”, “The Changing Face of Publication” and “Data Management Planning” accompany the main component of research time in the timetable, providing students with knowledge they can then consolidate through application to their research.

Open Science Training in Practice – download the report now!
After many months of hard work and analysis, the post-pilot report on OSTI was released last Saturday and is now available for download from the OSTI website, via http://www.opensciencetraining.com/content.php. The report draws on a broad range of perspectives from the student cohort, the auxiliary demonstrators and the course leader. A curated data set to accompany the report will be appearing on the OSTI site very soon and lecture movies from the pilot initiative have been appearing on the site over the past week. Keep checking back over the coming weeks as more content and downloads become available.

Where can I get course materials?
The official set of course materials will be appearing on our GitHub repository over the coming weeks – these are currently being tweaked based on the feedback we received and I can’t wait for others to fork the project and create other versions of the course as well.

Please feel free to get in touch with me if you’d like to hear more about OSTI, or have any comments, questions or suggestions. If we’re going to encourage uptake of Open working practices in the sciences, we need to start training our researchers in these approaches now. If you think there’s an opening at your institution for this kind of approach, then I would love to hear from you!

You can tweet Sophie at @StilettoFiend or email her at: sophie dot kershaw at okfn.org