Initiating Data Management Instruction to Graduate Students at the University of Houston Using the New England Collaborative Data Management Curriculum

The need for graduate instruction on data management best practices across disciplines is a theme that has emerged from two campus-wide data management needs assessments that have been conducted at the UH Libraries since 2010. Graduate students are assigned numerous data management responsibilities over the course of their academic careers, but rarely receive formal training in this area. To address this need, the UH Libraries offered a workshop entitled Research Data Management 101 in April, 2014, and all graduate and professional students on campus were invited to attend. The New England Collaborative Data Management Curriculum (NECDMC) served as the basis for the workshop, and two general sessions were planned. A research group in the College of Natural Sciences & Mathematics requested a special session after advertisements for the workshop were distributed. One hundred and five individuals registered for the event, sixty-five signed into the workshop, and sixty-three completed the end-of-workshop assessment. The results from this assessment, general lessons learned, and plans for future sessions will be discussed.