D6.15 Report on Training Webinars

The aim of T6.5 activities was to provide targeted training events to the SSH community in the form of workshops and webinars. The aim of the events was to maximize the uptake of SSHOC resources and to promote data-driven and cross-disciplinary research directions. Targeted training webinars aimed to complement training workshops. This report concerns training webinars which were conceived as thematically narrower and shorter online events that would precede or follow the workshops, while the workshops were conceptualized as comprehensive and immersive training sessions. Because of their online format, the webinars were highly inclusive since the attendance was possible for a great variety of individuals who for different reasons would be unable to attend the in-person events, and consequently, greatly expanded the outreach of SSHOC outcomes. Given the training design in the form of workshop- webinar pairs and the fact that most of the workshops were, like webinars, delivered online, the organisation of the events largely overlapped. In order to provide a concise report on the work done in SSHOC Task 6.5, this deliverable gives a detailed account of the webinars delivered, while for all other aspects that concern training workshops, please refer to Deliverable 6.14 Report on Training Workshops (Pahor de Maiti & Fišer, 2022).

The nine targeted training webinars listed below were organised from March 2019 to December 2021 and followed six thematic clusters:

1. Data Science for the Social Sciences and Humanities

   1.1. Hands-on Tutorial on Transcribing Interview Data (03/2019)

   1.2. Sharing Datasets of Pathological Speech (10/2020)

2. Data Science for Heritage Science

   2.1. Use and Re-Use of Scientific Data in Archaeology and Heritage (04/2020)

3. Data Protection and the General Data Protection Regulation

   3.1. GDPR and the DARIAH ELDAH Consent Form Wizard (10/2020)

4. Data Stewardship and Research Data Management

   4.1. Tools and Resources for FAIR Data (05/2020)

   4.2. Introducing the Newly Launched Ethnic and Migrant Minority Survey Registry (10/2020)

5. Data Citation

   5.1. FAIR SSH Data citation: Practical Guide (12/2021)

6. Text Mining for the Social Sciences and Humanities

   6.1. Quanlify With Ease: Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Corpus Analysis (04/2020) 6.2. SSHOC'ing Drama in the Cloud: the Added Value of SSHOC/CLARIN Services (06/2021)

The webinars usually lasted for an hour and consisted of presentations and a moderated questions and answers sessions at the end. Special care was taken in the preparation of the program and moderation of the live stream in order to ensure an engaging experience for the participants. The webinars were attended live by 638 people, that is 70 participants per webinar on average. Additional outreach was 

gained through playbacks of the recordings, published on the SSHOC YouTube channel,1 which have so far accounted for another 1127 views (data obtained on 28/02/2022). In total, the webinars reached 1765 people. Thanks to the online format, the webinars attracted a very diverse audience with regard to participants’ geographical location (on average 25 countries were represented at each webinar). Training webinars successfully reached its key target groups which included researchers, research performing institutions and research libraries, but the webinars were also followed by other stakeholders identified as relevant for SSHOC (e.g. research infrastructures, private sector, or civil society). The webinars were followed by a blogpost, furthermore presentations slides and recordings were uploaded to SSHOC channels for future use. When relevant, lessons learned about the organisation of webinars were informally shared with other SSHOC members in order to contribute to knowledge sharing about impactful online training events.

Training webinars proved to be a cost- and time-efficient training format which was warmly welcomed by user communities. The attendance numbers and the feedback show that the webinars addressed current topics, successfully engaged with diverse user communities and established collaborations between speakers that extend beyond the SSHOC project. Due to the online format, webinars were highly accessible to a great variety of individuals regardless of their background, geographical location, family situation, work duties, and career level. Despite the virtual fatigue due to the COVID-19 pandemic, these training webinars managed to attract a high number of participants and covered a wide variety of topics which were intertwined with other efforts realised within SSHOC. The webinars thus crucially contributed to one of the main SSHOC objectives—empowering individuals to maximise data re-use through Open Science and FAIR principles.