The Research Data Support team is pleased to announce the launch of the first in a series of updates to MANTRA, the free and open online research data management training course.
The first updated module ‘Research data in context’ (previously ‘Research data explained’) is now live on the MANTRA site and provides an introduction to research data, alongside detail on the contexts in which data are generated, and the challenges presented by big data in society.
MANTRA is designed to give post-graduate students, early career researchers, and information professionals the knowledge and skills needed to work effectively with research data.
Since launching in 2011, MANTRA has been through a number of significant rewrites to keep up with current trends, and over 10,000 different learners have visited MANTRA in the last academic year.
The ‘Research data in context’ module has been substantially revised in order to:
- remove dated and obsolete content;
- simplify and improve the readability of existing material;
- add information on data literacy and data science.
The changes in this module include:
- Revised pages: Introduction; Why is research data management important?; What are data?; What are research data?; Data as research output; Module Summary; Next & further reading.
- New pages: Data in society; Data Science; Video: machine learning; Data literacy and skills.
A change log detailing all changes in this release is available on request from the Research Data Support team (data-support@ed.ac.uk).
We hope you find this update interesting and useful and welcome any feedback you may have.
Further MANTRA updates are forthcoming, focusing on FAIR data and newer data protection legislation and we will announce these in future blog posts.
Bob Sanders
Research Data Support