Students deserve Research Data Management! Teaching with the RDM Educators Kit

Your students deserve to know about Research Data Management! In this brand-new "train the trainer" session for educators, RDM Services will prepare you to prepare your graduate and undergraduate students for increasing grant and publisher requirements for Data Management Plans and Data Deposit.

"Do my students even have data to manage?" you might ask. Au contraire mon capitane, they do! If research involves biological samples or survey results, you may feel confident you’re working with research data. But what if your research is rooted in creative practice? What if you’re looking for the specific heat of a material under a magnetic field? Data have many formats: text, numbers, images, recordings, software, algorithms, workflows. Research Data Management is caring for data through the research lifecycle: planning to archiving.

We'll discuss integrating our new RDM Educators Kit in the classroom, from 2-minute slide inserts to RDM class visits to multi-class Data Management Plan creation as an "open hand of cards." We'll end with a working session to imagine challenges and possibilities!

Participants will learn to:

Summarize RDM best practices and what Data Management Plans and Data Deposit look like in your field Locate available tools from RDM Services Prepare to implement Research Data Management tools in the classroom.

This session is great for educators from faculty to sessional instructors to graduate students ready to bring RDM into their classrooms!

Details: Any preparatory work for the session can be found on its information page. This virtual workshop will be recorded and shared on the same page, and discoverable via the Sherman Centre's Online Learning Catalogue.

Facilitator Bio: 

Isaac Pratt (he/him) is a research scientist by training and has a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. He leverages nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research experience to help support students, staff, and faculty. His expertise lies in questions surrounding data storage, security, planning, archival, and sharing. Isaac also provides support and curation services for McMaster Dataverse. His other interests include reproducible research methods, open science, and data science.

Danica Evering holds expansive experience with research support, education, project management, advocacy, and knowledge translation; with fluency in social practice art, healthcare, community research, data, and systems development. Danica supports students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. With an MA in Media Studies from Concordia, they are interested in fostering RDM within curious scholars and disciplines.

Certificate Eligibility: This workshop is eligible for the Sherman Centre's certificate program. For more information, visit scds.ca/certificate-program. It is also eligible for the Canadian Certificate for Digital Humanities. To learn more, visit ccdhhn.ca or contact scds@mcmaster.ca.

Credit Eligibility: This workshop counts toward credit for students in the Faculty of Science who are enrolled in SCIENCE 2SF1: Digital Skills Workshop. For any questions, please contact oursci@mcmaster.ca.

Data Management Plan Bootcamp (In-Person)

Let us be your body double with this in-person bootcamp! Data Management Plans (DMPs) are both incredibly helpful research tools and increasingly required for grants but it can hard to know how to complete a Data Management Plan if it’s your first time. If you're in the process of creating a DMP, either for a grant application or for your own research, join RDM Services for this afternoon session. The RDM services team will provide tailored guidance as you write your plan on site, and we'll have some light snacks and refreshments to keep you going. Come away with a clear path forward or even a finished DMP!

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

Identify the 5 key components of a data management plan (DMP). Compare strong and weak responses in each section of a DMP. Develop a tailored outline, or potentially a complete draft, of their own DMP!

This participatory session is especially relevant for researchers at all levels in the beginning stages of a research project or streamlining best practices for their research team. Pair this with our Data Deposit Bootcamp May 19, 2026 for a spring research data management intensive for graduate researchers and research staff. Come on your own, send your research staff, or bring your whole research group. Let us know if you're joining as a research team - we'll make sure you get a table to work together at!

Details: Any preparatory work for the session can be found on its information page. This workshop will not be recorded.

Facilitator Bio: 

Isaac Pratt (he/him) is a research scientist by training and has a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. He leverages nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research experience to help support students, staff, and faculty. His expertise lies in questions surrounding data storage, security, planning, archival, and sharing. Isaac also provides support and curation services for McMaster Dataverse. His other interests include reproducible research methods, open science, and data science.

Danica Evering holds expansive experience with research support, education, project management, advocacy, and knowledge translation; with fluency in social practice art, healthcare, community research, data, and systems development. Danica supports students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. With an MA in Media Studies from Concordia, they are interested in fostering RDM within curious scholars and disciplines.

Certificate Eligibility: This workshop is eligible for the Sherman Centre's certificate program. For more information, visit scds.ca/certificate-program. It is also eligible for the Canadian Certificate for Digital Humanities. To learn more, visit ccdhhn.ca or contact scds@mcmaster.ca.

Credit Eligibility: This workshop counts toward credit for students in the Faculty of Science who are enrolled in SCIENCE 2SF1: Digital Skills Workshop. For any questions, please contact oursci@mcmaster.ca.

Data Deposit Bootcamp (In-Person)

Data deposit and data sharing are increasingly recognized as best practice to support open research, reproducibility, research integrity, collaboration, and more. Disciplines, funders, and journals are increasingly requiring researchers to share or deposit data. But how do you get your dataset ready for sharing? What's the best repository to share it in? With light snacks and refreshments to sustain you and specialists on-hand to answer any questions, you'll end this session with ready-to-submit data...or submitted or even published data!

By the end of this 3-hour session, you will be able to:

Identify the appropriate repository for their dataset. Outline documentation and metadata best practices Develop a README file that thoroughly describes the dataset being deposited. Organize datasets in preparation for data deposit, including metadata entry.

If you have a dataset that's ready for deposit or that you'd like to get deposit ready, bring it along. No dataset? No problem! We have a sample dataset you can use to go through the process and learn how to deposit data.

This session is ideal for researchers, staff, and students preparing to share data for a publication, grant, or project—and for anyone interested in open data best practices. Graduate students who have completed their thesis work are especially encouraged to attend! Pair this with our Data Management Plan Bootcamp May 12, 2026 for a spring research data management intensive for graduate researchers and research staff.

Details: Any preparatory work for the session can be found on its information page. This workshop will not be recorded.

Facilitator Bio: 

Isaac Pratt (he/him) is a research scientist by training and has a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. He leverages nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research experience to help support students, staff, and faculty. His expertise lies in questions surrounding data storage, security, planning, archival, and sharing. Isaac also provides support and curation services for McMaster Dataverse. His other interests include reproducible research methods, open science, and data science.

Danica Evering holds expansive experience with research support, education, project management, advocacy, and knowledge translation; with fluency in social practice art, healthcare, community research, data, and systems development. Danica supports students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. With an MA in Media Studies from Concordia, they are interested in fostering RDM within curious scholars and disciplines.

Certificate Eligibility: This workshop is eligible for the Sherman Centre's certificate program. For more information, visit scds.ca/certificate-program. It is also eligible for the Canadian Certificate for Digital Humanities. To learn more, visit ccdhhn.ca or contact scds@mcmaster.ca.

Credit Eligibility: This workshop counts toward credit for students in the Faculty of Science who are enrolled in SCIENCE 2SF1: Digital Skills Workshop. For any questions, please contact oursci@mcmaster.ca.