Five representatives of the Chinese Ecological Research Network (CERN) completed an intensive 12-week CERN-LTER research data management training course last fall at the Sevilleta LTER Research Station in New Mexico as part of an ongoing collaboration.
The course provided Chinese participants, data managers and administrators responsible for the design and development of a CERN data management system with information on the basic concepts of managing research information, and helped to lay the groundwork for establishing protocols and standards for the international exchanges.
Preliminary descriptions for the first two Chinese-coordinated training courses were developed to include:
- Data management principles
- System operation
- Archive data format
- Relational databases
- Practical programming
- Integration
Instructors James Brunt (Sevilleta), William Michener (J.W. Jones Ecological Research Center), Beryl Leach (consultant, World Bank) and Walt Conley met with participants to evaluate the course and identify future CERN training needs in China.
They recommended that:
- CERN establish a permanent data management training program;
- CERN trainers conduct an initial five- to six-week training course in Beijing;
- CERN obtain dedicated computing resources to insure the ongoing success of a training program
- CERN trainers prepare the first-course curriculum and exercises in Chinese with CERN data
- CERN trainers teach a second course with assistance to address more advanced topics
- A follow-up three- to four-week advanced course be conducted on curriculum review and program data management philosophy and development, concepts, advanced shell programming, advanced database programming, data synthesis, and graphical and statistical programming