Research Data Management for Students
Research data management (RDM) has long been considered irrelevant for students, because they have little research data of their own. Data literacy, i. e. the skills to collect, manage, evaluate and apply data in a critical manner, is very relevant for students and has a large overlap with RDM. Therefore, the Center for Sustainable Research Data Management (CRDM) has two “Digital and Data Literacy in Teaching Lab” (DDLitLab) funded projects:
"Early Education for Data Management Decisions (E²D²)" and "Early Education for Data Management Decisions an adapted course (E²D² adapted)". The overarching goal of E²D² was to strengthen the RDM skills of students in the Faculty of Education.
We have provided an overview of the following RDM topics:
- What is research data? (What data types are there and how to handle them?)
- What is research data management? Why research data management?
- What is the research data lifecycle?
- How do I secure my data? (Back-up-strategies)
- How do I structure my data?
- What services does the Universität Hamburg offer?
- What is the individual benefit for students?
The project has shown that RDM can help students to complete their studies and academic work in a more structured and high-quality manner. The workshops showed that the right information, methods and exercises make RDM interesting and practical. The feedback from workshop participants was very positive. In our survey, the majority described a gain from the workshop.
A student responded after a workshop e. g. the following:
“[…] I feel more confident when planning and carrying out a scientific project and assume that the quality of my work will increase.”
(translated from German "„[…] Ich fühle mich sicherer bei der Planung und Durchführung eines wissenschaftlichen Projekts und gehe davon aus, dass die Qualität meiner Arbeit steigen wird.“)
In order to be able to reach students from all faculties, we started the follow-up project in April 2023. Early Education for Data Management Decisons an adapted course (E²D² adapted).
The second project continues to have the overarching goal of strengthening students' RDM skills, but is now addressed at all students at the Universität Hamburg. A fixed workshop format is no longer specified, but the content is divided into shorter modules. This enables integration into existing events (lectures, research workshops or colloquia). Lecturers who can “book” an RDM offer are also addressed. This takes into account which topics may be particularly important and helpful for the respective department/study and semester.
The following three aspects are generally relevant and useful when dealing with data.
Publications
Jacob, Juliane, & Schulz, Sandra. (2024). Posterpräsentation 2. DDLitLab-Projekt Forschungsdatenmanagement. http://doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.14001
Jacob, Juliane, & Schulz, Sandra. (2024). Posterpräsentation 1. DDLitLab: Projekt Forschungsdatenmanagement. http://doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.14141
Jacob, Juliane, Neumann, Jana, & Schulz, Sandra. (2023, March). Forschungsdatenmanagement: Workshop für Studierende im DDLitLab-Projekt. http://doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.9583
Jacob, Juliane, Neumann, Jana, & Schulz, Sandra. (2023). Early Education for Data Management Decisions - Ergebnisse der Teilnehmendenbefragung (Version 1.0). https://doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.9844
Questions?
Please contact juliane.jacob"AT"uni-hamburg.de in case of questions about RDM or the DDLitLab projects.