D6.10 Report on the SSHOC Training Community

This document is the deliverable “D.6.10 – Report on the SSHOC Training Community” of the Horizon2020 project “Social Sciences & Humanities Open Cloud” (hereinafter also referred to as “SSHOC”, project reference: 823782).

This deliverable is the first report on the activities that the SSHOC project, task 6.4 has undertaken to build a Training Community for trainers in the Social Sciences and Humanities using the European Open Science Cloud. This task started in July 2019 and activities will continue till the end of the SSHOC project.

The new Training Community is not discipline specific nor is it general like the community of practice for training coordinators. The goal of the Training Community is to facilitate knowledge exchange and collaborations between trainers who provide training to scholars in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) on tools and services offered by the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The task focuses on general tools and services but is also looking for synergies and training, tools and services that are offered by one discipline but is valuable to other disciplines.

During the summer of 2019 the task has been reaching out to the trainers to introduce the idea of a Training Community and to inquire in what way such a Training Community could serve their needs. The Training Community was launched in September 2019 and the task started to examine the currently available training in the SSH and work on creating a Training Toolkit that would improve the findability of train-the-trainer resources. Any trainer who provides training to scholars in the SSH on tools and services available in the EOSC is welcome to join the Training Community. The task invites trainers when reaching out, but also invites trainers who participate in its planned activities such as the train-the-trainer workshops and bootcamps. Last but not least the report describes the task identifying the main nodes for training in the SSH who will be approached to join the Training Community as well. The Training Community currently (April 2020) consists of 75 trainers covering all disciplines in the Social Sciences and Humanities. In the report a more detailed description of the Training Community is provided.

Based on the initial outreach activities the trainers value knowledge exchange and collaborations most, therefore the task plans regular online Training Community meetings and bootcamps and workshops during the project. The report describes in detail the online kick-off meeting of the Training Community and the planned face to face train-the-trainer bootcamps on conferences in the SSH domain that were prepared during the first months of 2020. Due to the COVID19-crises, these bootcamps will be delivered online as much as possible or postponed to 2021.

In the final report on building the Training Community, due December 2021, the task will elaborate more on the results of the online Training Community meetings, bootcamps and workshops and focus on making the community sustainable after the SSHOC project.

Note on the terminology

Deliverable 6.10 is the first report on establishing a community of trainers and training nodes in the social sciences and humanities. Members of the task decided in the early stages of the project that the term ‘community’ would reflect the type of activities more than the term ‘network’. ‘Network’ is a rather limiting term that expresses a desire to connect to other professionals on the ‘case-to-case’ basis, while ‘community’ reflects the expectation of the member trainers, expressed during the kick-off meeting, to provide continuous support, mentoring and experience/information exchange. The title of this report was changed accordingly. At the same time, this community, although initiated by the SSHOC project, aspires to be sustainable after the end of the project, hence in the future the term “SSH Training Community” will be used.

This deliverable has been accepted by the European Commission on - 03 November 2020