No. 3, February 2025
Authors
The DALIA Team
06.02.2025
DALIA after two Years
Two years into the project, the DALIA team met in Aachen on December 18 and 19 to discuss the progress of the project, the results of the past year and the next steps. Therefore, the DALIA project members and members of the DALIA Advisory Board took part in the overall team meeting. The event was hosted by the IT Center of RWTH Aachen University.
During the meeting, the progress of the project and the most important results of the various working fields within DALIA were presented and the resulting next steps and plans were explained. Furthermore, the progress of the project was critically evaluated and essential decisions for the future of DALIA were made.
Successful Launch of the DALIA Search Platform
On December 9th, the successful launch of the DALIA search portal was announced. The FAIR search platform for teaching materials on data literacy is available at search.dalia.education. With this first of three planned milestones, DALIA currently offers access to over 450 FDM Open Educational Resources (OER).
It is possible to send us the metadata of materials as part of the Call for Metadata.
Publication of the Dalia Interchange Format 1.3 (DIF)
In order to feed metadata on learning and teaching materials into the DALIA platform, it was necessary to define a standardized format and also specify exactly what metadata is required. For this reason, the DALIA Interchange Format (DIF for short) was developed. The required metadata is divided into the categories “mandatory”, “recommended” and “optional”. As soon as the necessary metadata is available, a resource can be listed on the DALIA platform. The exact details can be found in the publication on Zenodo. Additionally, a template, in which the metadata can be entered directly according to the DIF, is available as a csv file.
Contributions from DALIA at Various Events
Presentation of the DALIA Platform at the “Digital Competences in Science” Theme Week
The themed week “Digital Competencies in Science” took place in Hanover at the beginning of December 2024. The event was organized by the VolkswagenStiftung with the aim of promoting the interdisciplinary and supra-regional exchange of ideas and initiatives on digital skills in science.
As part of this workshop, Sonja Herres-Pawlis gave a presentation entitled “Research Data Management in Curricular Teaching, NFDI Section EduTrain and the DALIA Platform for RDM Teaching Materials”, in which the perspective of NFDI4Chem was introduced and the DALIA search portal was presented.
DALIA at the Base4NFDI User Conference 2024
On November 20 and 21, the first Base4NFDI User Conference took place at Fraunhofer FOKUS in Berlin. A central focus of the two-day event was to present the existing basic services and candidates to the NFDI community and to provide explanations and contacts for integrating them. As part of the interactive program, individual aspects of the various services were explained in detail and the institutions that will support the introduction of these services were presented.
In addition to many exciting talks and poster presentations, the DALIA search platform was also presented under the title“A Platform for the Provision of Teaching and Training Contents in Data Literacy: DALIA4NFDI” and the strong connection between DALIA and the NFDI was highlighted.
DALIA at the EOSC Symposium 2024
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative hosted the EOSC Symposium in Berlin this year. The focus is on establishing a system that will enable and simplify the search for and access to data and services for research and innovation in Europe.
The unconference session entitled “Data competencies: Training, education, qualification for researchers and data stewards”, which took place on the second day of the conference, began with a short presentation by Jens Dierkes and Jochen Ortmeyer, in which the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI), NFDI4Health, NFDI4Chem, the EduTrain section, DALIA and other European initiatives were presented. This unconference marked an important milestone for the international networking of DALIA and brought our efforts to the European stage.
Where do the Data Literacy Projects stand? The DALIA Project at the BMBF Status Event on September 19 and 20 in Berlin
Where do the data literacy projects stand? This was the key question at the status event, which took place in Berlin on September 19 and 20, 2024. Representatives of the projects in the three funding lines were invited: Establishing data competence centers in science, strengthening the data skills of young scientists and the reuse and management of research data at universities of applied sciences, as well as representatives of DALIA as a metaproject and the NFDI section Education and Training (EduTrain). Accordingly, the workshops at the status events focused on the topics of data literacy and skills in research data management, training materials and formats, as well as responsibilities, operating models, sustainability and funding issues.
In addition to networking on site, the DALIA project also hosted a workshop session. In the session entitled “Using synergies: Rethinking interdisciplinary teaching materials and training courses”, various aspects relating to teaching materials were explored and exchanges between participants were encouraged. At the status event, participants interacted in the workshop sessions, intensifying networking with the data competence centers and gaining further feedback from the community.
The Networking of Actors and Resources - OER in the NFDI and in the Data Competence Centers: a Workshop Report
On April 22 and 23, 2024, representatives of the NFDI consortia NFDI4Culture, NFDI4Memory, the data competence centers QUADRIGA and HERMES and the infrastructure project of the NFDI section “Training & Education” - DALIA - met at the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz for a joint workshop.
In addition to presenting their own projects, the aim was to find common synergies. In particular, three fields of action relating to materials and repositories were identified as key challenges for the further harmonization of project work processes: Metadata and interoperability, sustainability and collaborations.
DALIA and the NFDI
DALIA wants to become a basic service in the NFDI
On January 22, the DALIA team submitted a proposal for the Initialisation Phase of Base4NFDI to become a basic service in the NFDI. The aim of DALIA4NFDI is to establish a centralised platform for promoting data literacy and research data management through quality-assured, open, accessible teaching and training resources. Via the embedding into the basic service landscape of the NFDI, DALIA will provide users with a single point of entry to find relevant educational resources. If you’re interested, check out the DALIA4NFDI proposal!
DALIA and the NFDI Section EduTrain - Upcoming Dates
Every 3rd Monday of the month from 11:30 - 12:30 the WP 2 - Inventory of teaching and learning materials of the NFDI section EduTrain, meets online in this Zoom room.
DALIA - Upcoming Dates
DALIA Presentations at Conferences
- DHd 2025, March 3 to 7, 2025, Bielefeld
- E-Science Days 2025, March 12 to 14, 2025, Heidelberg