# Skills area for REG

[TOC]

## Introduction

What Skills need from REG
- Technical support reviewing and running Applied Skills activity (TIN, DSG)
- Development and delivery of self-paced training resources aligned with the REG areas of expertise (RSE, RDS, RSE-DH, HPC)
- Career showcasing & student engagement for roles within the research engineering remit
- Delivery and sync / async support for learners taking courses within REG's remit (exercises and practicals)

## Points of contact

- Skills operational: Mishka Nemes & Jules Manser
- REG operational: James Robinson
- Skills executive sign-off: Vera Matser
- REG executive sign-off: Martin O'Reilly / James Geddes (TBD)

## Project allocation in FY 22-23

Questions:
- What does RSE / RDS development involve?
- [name=JamesR] Much of the RSE course is at the wrong level for the course participants. I estimate that we should allocate 1 FTE month for each module that we want to fully re-write. The RDS course doesn't have this problem but is still in the development stage after only having been delivered once.
- Has TIN / DSG required any support so far OR do we anticipate any needs?
- [name=JamesR] The actual workload needed for DSG/TIN support is currently 0.3 FTE split across three people. [name=Jules] can comment on whether it's likely to be lower next year, but if we're busy for 2 months before and 1 month after the start of a DSG, and we run three DSGs per year (plus TIN commitments) this feels like a full-time 30% commitment, which would be 3.6 FTE months, not 1.2.
- What is the total FTE allocated to RSE delivery?
- [name=JamesR] The actual staffing requirements for the November 2022 RSE course were 40 full days. One FTE year of REG is 176 days (80% of 220 active working days per year) so 40 days is equivalent to 2.7 months. For future delivery we should ensure that we're budgeting an appropriate amount for this.

## Why we need to move to self-paced course provision

From **REG’s perspective** we’d prefer not to do so for the following reasons:

- For the RDS course: the content isn’t easily convertible to a Moodle-compatible format (which I understand requires relatively simple static HTML)
- [name=JamesR] Note that we already have a static HTML version of the course. Would adding this to Moodle be useful on its own or does it need videos to go alongside?
- For both courses: the content is still in flux (more so for RDS than RSE) and so would need to be regularly updated
- For both courses: I’m not sure we have enough people willing to be recorded delivering the course (if video versions are required)

From **Skills' perspective**, we are keen to develop (online) self-paced courses on the Moodle Online Learning Platform (OLP) for the following reasons:

1) Sign-up / account registration - useful for:
- tracking users progress and identifying where users get stuck, thus helping us understand where to make changes and improvements
- automatically suggesting other modules or courses that would follow on
- supporting the users in their learning journey by sequentially walking them through course modules or chapters

2) Better support and incentives for the learners
- certicate of completion upon finishing a course
- (desirable) dedicated Slack channel on the Learning at the Turing workspace where learners can ask questions and engage directly with the course creators
- streamlined learning experience with useful features such as completion percentage, hint etc.

3) Enhanced learning experience
- interactive activities, quizes and assessments that are not supported through a non-specialised platform (such as Jupyter book)
- accessibility (through a formalised framework dedicated for online learning)

4) Outreach
- We can support a much larger learner community and provide more flexible options for learning (compared to live delivery only)

5) Community of trainers
- self-paced course materials can be accompanied by an _instructor sheet_ to allow interested educators teach the modules / courses in their own communities

Issues with the Moodle OLP

- no direct way of embedding coding exercises (and jupyter books) that require cloud services

## Project allocation in FY 23-24

A list of projects is available below, in order of priority:

### Self-paced (online) course developments and improvements

- Target existing courses: RSE with Python, RDS, RSE for (to be discussed - lead: Fede)
- List of required tasks (not exhaustive):
- review and assess intervention points for the each course, and ideally ensure modularisation so that modules can be taken standalone or added to other modules to form new courses
- prepare and professionally record bitesize videos (no longer than 30 mins ideally)
- re-design activities and practicals to suit self-paced learning
- develop slides, PDFs or any other downloadable reading materials using the existing materials on GitHub / course pages
- build new exercise examples and case studies to reflect a variety of expertise domains
- put together the videos & slides, activities, practicals and assessments to create the online learning modules
- review course materials and user experience (using the wider network of REG folks) and with support from Skills Team
- Create a rota of instructors to monitor the Slack channels each month (eg one nominated REG person each month to respond to incoming queries and work on issues with Skills team for 1h each week)

### Estimated time needed

#### RSE course one-off

| Item | Estimated time | Total FTE days |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Ensure modules are independent | 1 day per module | 10 |
| Record videos | 1 day per module | 10 |
| Re-design modules for self-paced learning | 1 FTE month per module | 150 |
| Develop accompanying downloadable slides | 1 FTE month per module | 150 |
| New exercises with less domain expertise | 2 FTE weeks per module | 70 |
| Put together videos/slides for each module | For Skills team | - |
| Review materials and user experience | For Skills team | - |
| TOTAL | - | ~400 |

So approximately 2.5 FTE years of effort needed (1 FTE year = 176 days). I imagine the RDS course would require slightly less time than this (as it's shorter) but would be broadly similar.

#### Continuous/repeating

| Item | Estimated time | Total FTE days per year |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Monitoring Slack channels 1hr/week | 52hrs/year | 7 |
| Teaching RSE course (current format) | 4 days per module (2 instructors + 4 helpers) | 40 |
| Teaching RDS course (current format) | 2 days per module (2 instructors) | 8 |
| RDS course exercises (current format) | 3 days per module (6 people: instructors+helpers) | 12 |
| DSG/TIN support | 0.3 FTE | 54 |
| | **TOTAL** | 104 |

so approximately 72 days remaining from annual 1 FTE budget (1 FTE year = 176 days).

### Delivery of live courses in flipped class-room approach

- Run the above courses live once a year for the Turing community only, and only for the practicals and discussions (presentations and reading to be done in their own time)

### Applied Skills support
_Current – all supplemental to the Science support role_
- Support initial project scoping of DSG/TIN projects, including talking to challenge owners/TIN partners about their “challenge”/problem
- Applicant reviews for DSG (participants and DSG PIs) and TIN interns
currently - 3 DSGs, 2 TIN rounds, DSG PIs > 15pax + per year
- Report reviews for DSG
- ~~TRE support during DSG~~ Move this to TRE service area (currently funded from DSH budget)

Future (24-25 FY)
- Increased number of DSGs – supporting external DSGs with some of the above would increase (alternative is to recruit more science support)
- Mentorship/supervisory role for DSG PIs and/or interns
- DSG variation TBD – (2024)

### Other project ideas to be discussed

1. New potential courses: HPC (discussed with Jim), RSE for life sciences (suggested by Lydia)
- Dedicated funding would be needed
- eg. HPC is already covered by the Carpentries, is there any scope for the Turing to create a course on top of that?
3. Activities & resource development to support the transition to a RSE / RDS career
- [name=JamesR] there are lots of careers in AI/Data Science that aren't RSE roles. Although this might be easier for REG to talk about, is transition to an RSE/RDS job something the Skills team want to emphasise to enrichment students? For example, I think the RSE course teaches generally-useful skills for writing research code that could be applicable in many areas
- example of resource - [Turing Way research infrastructure roles](https://the-turing-way.netlify.app/collaboration/research-infrastructure-roles.html)
4. Development of an API for case studies
- Speak to Chris Burr about funding options
6. Side project – Safe Haven How to use/login to moodle course – pending. Until then deliver TRE training on how to use/ legals + data security

## Notes during the meeting

- RDS is more easily convertible to slides
- CM best person to contact re RDS course
- flipped classroom for both RSE & RDS
- support learners sync (drop-ins, instructor-led exercises) and async (Git answers > Slack channel > Moodle forum)
- separately fund one-off bits of work and stick to up 1 FTE
- [Notes from RSE course debrief 28 November 2022](https://hackmd.io/@BUANuEA3QdyqkHpIc3xfJQ/HJLc-U5Us/edit)

## Notes during meeting w/ MN, JR & VM

19 Dec 2022

- ApSki: TIN app reviews, DSG PI interviews
- S&T: self-paced courses RDS & RSE
- Need for a **workshop** to identify the needs of different user groups and how REG could cover those needs; focus on more specialised topics
- combine this with the learning pathways?
- align this workshop with the RSE / RDS hiring process
- ideally have it in person at the Turing: skills (MN, VM, SN) amd REG people from all seniority levels, RAMs, ARC, TRFs etc, research computing
- identify gaps at the landscape level
- one output could be expected prerequisite level

:::success
ACTIONS
- [x] - [name=Mishka] to draft scaffold for workshop (with support from James)
- [x] - [name=James] to draw interest from REG team on workshop in January 2023 (2h)
- [ ] - [name=Mishka] to write checklist on module expectation and guide on what's expected for the learner experience
- [ ] - X to test *project structure* module into self-paced course
- [ ] - [name=Mishka] to share example courses with James
:::

## Notes during meeting w/ MN, SN & VM

:date: 20 Feb 2023

### Agenda & notes
- desirable outcomes after the needs analysis workshop
- learner personas: define, prioritise
- prerequisite materials
- list of projects, then prioritise
- mapping with learner personas and prereqs
- some gaps could be supported by business partners (funding, collaboration)
- decision regarding the RSE & RDS courses - run again live, who should work on the self-paced versions?
- run the live courses in Nov 2023 (RSE) and Feb 2024 (RDS)
- if self-paced courses are ready, then use the scheduled time for support hours
- for the self-paced courses, run an external call / commisioning (use REG quote as benchmark)
- request test modules before fully committing eg 1/10 modules
- TIN / DSG support
- moving towards Science team support (capped on number of hours a week depending on individual circumstances, 10-20h a week)
- ways of working together
- need to have senior REG representation when booking in project work
- use GitHub for agile project work (using scrum templates)

### Feedback REG for Skills support in FY 22-23
- not good value for money
- DSG: 3 x 0.1 FTE (3 REG people, service time quota?)
- lack of availability when support is required
- unable to book in time with REG even 6 months in advance for small projects

:::success
ACTIONS
- [ ] - [name=Mishka] to confirm dates with REG for upcoming live courses
- [ ] - [name=Sarah] to get quotes from different suppliers & find out more about the process
- [ ] - [name=Vera] to arrange scrum master training / workshop with EBI

::::