Course Data skills in biodiversity education and research in Yerevan

! The course is postponed until further notice !

Regional Training course for M.Sc. and Ph.D. students with expert trainers and trainers-in-training - Yerevan, Armenia (5 days). Data publishing course in Yerevan, 30 March - 3 April 2020. Note that the course is postponed because of the COV-19 travel restrictions.

Successful attendees will be issued a certificate of attendance and a digital GBIF Certified Trainer badge. This training model has been tested in the Biodiversity Information for Development (BID) programme and is adapted to BioDATA needs. The course is designed for 20 participants. All applicants must submit a motivation letter as part of their registration. The lectures will be in English.

Eligibility for BioDATA students is limited to the partner countries in the BioDATA project: Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, and Tajikistan - with a focus on Armenia for this particular course. Travel, meals, and accommodation will be covered for accepted participants in this course. Please note that all participants must have valid travel insurance that covers medical expenses.

Program overview

An overview of the BioDATA course is provided by the draft agenda and the draft program.

Preparatory pre-course activities (March 2020)

Preparatory pre-course activities and assignments will be launched in March 2020. All students will get login instructions for the e-learning platform that we will use during the BioDATA course.

Onsite course (30th March to 3rd April 2020) -- postponed

Monday 30 March: In the morning, there is a half-day public symposium that will take place at ANAU. In the afternoon, the training course starts at the Paris Hotel. Introduction to the course, and planning for data publication workflows (with Use Case 1).

Tuesday 31 March: Foundations including terminology, data standards, and data documentation. Data capture and digitization.

Wednesday 1 April: Field trip with iNaturalist.

Thursday 2 April: Data quality principles and data cleaning tools and procedures, including OpenRefine. Data publication with the GBIF IPT (integrated data publishing toolkit). [BioDATA course IPT server] [GBIF UAT demo server]

Friday 3 April: Data descriptor publications, dataset metadata, data papers, and FAIR data guidelines. More hands-on practice with IPT data publishing.

Follow-up activities (April 2020)

Follow-up activities and assignments (with Use Case 2 and Use Case 3).

Teachers and mentors

Local organizers: Armine Abrahamyan, Andreas Melikyan

Teachers: Dag Endresen and Rukaya Johaadien (GBIF-Norway); Katia Cezón García (GBIF-Spain); Dmitry Schigel, and Laura Russell (GBIF Secretariat).

Mentors: Tatevik Aloyan, Naira Gasparyan, Hrant Khachatryan, Astghik Movsisyan, Miguel Vega Ruiz (GBIF Spain), and Oleh Prylutskyi (BioDATA Ukraine partner)

Registration

Register online (deadline was 29 February).

Students will be selected on the basis of a brief motivation letter describing their background and interest in the course topic of open biodiversity data publication.

Venue and travel information

The venue for the training course will be at the Paris Hotel in Yerevan.

International travel is booked by the BioDATA secretariat at the Natural History Museum in Oslo. Local transport costs will be reimbursed during the course for participants not living in Yerevan.

Accommodation (only for non-Armenian participants) and meals during the course are covered for the accepted participants.

Please note that all participants must have valid travel insurance that covers medical expenses.