---
# System prepended metadata

title: Training Steering Group Jan 2025
tags: ['2025']

---

# Training Steering Group January 2025
**Date & Time:** Jan 20, 10:00-12:00
**Connection details:** https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/62955236256
**TrSG book:** https://hackmd.io/@NBIS-training-steering-group/TrSG/%2F5SYwXztaTpKrn95vDPh1jw

## Welcome 🙌🏽

## Code of Conduct reminder
Adopted from the [Recurse Rules](https://www.recurse.com/social-rules)
* Be respectful, honest, inclusive, accommodating, appreciative, and open to learning from everyone else.
* Do not attack, demean, disrupt, harass, or threaten others or encourage such behavior.
* Be patient, allow others to speak, and use the zoom reactions & chat if you would like to voice something. 
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## :hourglass_flowing_sand: Agenda:

| Duration    | Activity                                                     | Time        |
| ----------- |:------------------------------------------------------------ |:----------- |
| 5 mins      | Welcome and housekeeping                                     | 10:00-10:05 |
| 15 mins     | (information) NBIS TrC                               | 10:05-10:20 |
| 10 mins     | Advisory Program            | 10:20-10:30
| 20 mins     | (information) NBIS TrLs              | 10:30-10:50
 **10 mins**  | **Break**                                                                       | 10:50-11:00 |
| 15 mins     |  What's the purpose of evaluations?                                  | 11:00-11:15 |
| 20 mins     | Retrospective/ways of working                                  | 11:20-11:40 |
| 10 mins     | AOB (any other business)                                   | 11:40-11:50 |
| 10 mins     | Wrap-up & communications                                   | 11:50-12:00 |

## Links & Resources:


## Rollcall:
🗣 Name/🐸 pronouns/✍🏼 Team affiliation and Site
Elin/she-her/TrC/uppsala
Richel|He/him|SCoRe/NBIS/UPPMAX
Katja/she/her/NBIS/MISB/Lund
Anna /she/her/CMB/UU
Stephan/-/NBIS/DM/Chalmers-UU
Diana/she/UPPMAX/NAISS
Tomas/he/NBIS/Chalmers-UU
Louella/she/HaC LU
Nanjiang Shu/he/NBIS/Sysdev-SU

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## Information from NBIS TrC
- Epigenomics course jointly organised by NBIS and NGI has been funded, happening in Autumn 2025
- OpenLab: open lab in Uppsaa where everyone can walk in and do sequencing There will be a symposium on it soon. It can be used by other courses too. Louella & Agatha are the NBIS people involved
- New look of https://nbis.se/training
    -  Untested first version, create an issue at GitHub issues of the webpage
    -  Info needs to be updated
    -  Steering group will contact course leaders on how to do this
    -  Changes go live directly

- Support/Training strategy meeting next week (is around 2 times a year), discussion points:
    - Want a closer collaboration with NAISS (the Swedish HPC infrastructure), contact Diana Iusan
        - Maybe 'Information security' is a course that may be a collaboration, Diana will contact Marcus Lundberg
    - Course statistics and declining number of registered participants
    - Scheduling course dates and booking rooms
    - Course staffing
    - New course topics
    - NGI-NBIS training collaborations
    - Information on intranet
    - DDLS Research school
    - Mention the teaching literature club?
    - Mention peer observation: doing peer observation counts as training, hence less time for actual training



Notes for TrC to follow up:
- add RaukR to NBIS training website
- advertise NBIS courses to NAISS newsletter
    - short one liner, standard text
    - connect with Diana
 

## Advisory program
- Newsletter - what to include?
- Selection criteria
- Open to all PhD students in Sweden. They commonly have a high level of bioinformatics competences
- A new research school: MedFarmBio, for PhD students, that can apply to the advisory program
- How should students be selected for the advisory program? We see that the highest ranked students end up in the advisory program. A problem with this is that these students are more clustered. Should we spread eligibility more to, e.g. include students in new regions?
    - There are more students than spots
    - They mostly need to have the time to be engaged: students are already encouraged to engage and selected for this
    - Students that did not engage, why did they do so? Are these contacted? No
- Add link to NAISS training in newsletter

## Information from NBIS TrLs

|  Team | Notes |
| -------- | -------- |
| AIDA |Absent   |
| BIIF |Giselle has left, will be new person appointed |
| Cell & molecular biology|Some courses open for application, Spatial omics course in Switzerland, Aditya started in Gothenborg|
| Data Management     |Many requests for courses|
| EvoBio | New round of "internal training" starting tomorrow, snakemake in spring is unsure: Tomas will check|
| Health and Clinical  |New members in process of recruiting.  Dates for Spring courses are set and application now open: Intro to NGS, ML Biostats 1, RaukR | 
| Microbiology, Immunology and Structural Biology     |Dates for Advanced Data visualization course is set, applications sent out at the end of this week, 2 new people for short-term support on the way (1x Umeå, 1x Stockholm)|
| Systems development     |Workshop on FitSM |
| UPPMAX/SCoRe|Start of new joint national courses under NAISS. Conside r talking to NBIS training hub, Elin will contact us :-) . Can NAISS also advertise NBIS courses? Diana checks. Other way around? Unsure, maybe mention at SciLifeLab training page|

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## Break (9 mins) Start again 10:50

## What's the purpose of evaluations?
"The overall goal with the Evaluate stage is to continuously improve training activities, maximize their impact on trainees and the targeted community, and ultimately contribute to societal advancements." - [ELIXIR Training SPLASH](https://elixir-europe-training.github.io/ELIXIR-Training-SPLASH/evaluate)

**1. Short-term feedback (mandatory)**
 format: feedback forms (Core questions documentation: https://github.com/elixir-europe-training/Training-Metrics-Database/wiki)
 measures: 
    - Demographics (might be collected in the registration form)
    - Trainee satisfaction

**2. Long-term feedback (mandatory)**
format: feedback forms
measures: 
    - Learning
    - Impact 

**3. Assessments (recommended)**
    formats: quizzes, discussions, student projects, etc.
    measures: 
    - learning

**4. Trainer reflections (recommended)**
    formats: peer feedback, self-reflection
    purpose:
    - improve teaching and training material

**5. Internal feedback (recommended)**
    formats: Co-development, Internal test-run of new courses
    purpose:
    - improve training material and teaching

Why are the feedback forms mandatory? This is to satisfy stakeholder/funders requirements to get funding. We have VR, ELIXIR and SciLifeLab reporting to conform to.

"Meta-analysis about course satisfaction question"
Uttl, Bob, Carmela A. White, and Daniela Wong Gonzalez. "Meta-analysis of faculty's teaching effectiveness: Student evaluation of teaching ratings and student learning are not related." Studies in Educational Evaluation 54 (2017): 22-42.

AP: 
- Check the reporting requirements for VR and SciLifeLab (TrCs)
- Go through Feedback form questions (Richel will prepare for next TrSG)
- Consider giving feedback to funders about their reporting requirements

## Retrospective/ways of working
What worked well? 
- Monthly catchups; shortened version if not much to discuss :) +1 +1 +1 +1
- **Agenda circulated before the meeting +3+1+1 +1**
- Reading the agenda before-hand +1+1
- always a well prepared agenda 
- Leadership of chairwoman: mildness, openess, looking for opportunities +1+1
- not filling up meetings for the sake of it +1+1+1
- discussions +1
- coming back to topics later on, allow time before decisions +1 +1+1+1
- break halfway +1


What held us back?
- meetings planned in the last minute
- lack of engagement +1 +1
- asymmetric discussions, excluding the more silent people +1 +1
- Some agenda points could be replaced by writing down people's toughts before a meeting: no need to ask for a subset of people to talk during a meeting +1+1
- things that could be put in an email should be put in an email, or just put in this document for reading +1+1+1
- ask everybody for his/her opinion, not just the ones that talk +1+1
- lack of time
- ask people to vote to make decision, not let the loudest speakers decide +1+1+1
- time of the meeting - conflicting meetings


Going forward:
- When should we meet?
 Monthly update on 3rd Monday 10:30-12:00
- How should we work?
    - tap more help from the TrSG members
    - chair rotation amongst the TrSG members not just TrCs
    - make use of voting features for decisions
    - more going around the table during discussions 
    - written updates for the information sections 
    - circulate agenda well in advance
    - end meetings before time if we're done (no need to drag things out)
- What should be our focus for spring 2025
    - feedback forms
    - respond on this retrospective/evaluation :-)
    - problem with few applicants: why? future? more collaborations?



## AOB



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## Wrap-up & Communications

* ### What to BRING BACK to your team?
    * Speakers needed for NGS Lite: 15 mins recording, Louella
    * Next teaching literature club meeting is on March 6 09:00-09:55
    * TAs needed for the Single Cell RNASeq course, contact Åsa Björklund
    * CLs to please check their course webpage in https://nbis.se/training, for edits please email TrCs
    

* ### What to CATCH from your team? 
  * Teaching rooms in their sites


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## Next meeting: 

Monday February 17th 10:30-12:00