Education Summit 2021

When we met at the last Education Summit we had just all been thrown into a world of virtual only delivery, for both higher education teaching & assessment and short course training. At that time we had all started to look at, test out and review different tools and methods for delivery and were starting to get a grasp on what was achievable quickly and where our bigger challenges lay. During the initial discussion in May 2020 we collated a set of tips and guidance around a whole set of tools for delivery, pain points / challenges and how people in attendance had started to address these and a review of assessment methods being employed. Further work was undertaken at the ISMB WEB in 2020, and over the intervening period we have grown more accustomed to working in this virtual landscape and many of us now see a future where this virtual approach is here to stay.

One of the major plus points in moving virtual has been increased access to training and education, but it has also come with larger demands on offerings as well. With more people wanting to access training / education and it being offered in a more portable manner, can we therefore work more on ensuring our courses and training materials are FAIR as a way of making them more usable after an event?

This session will explore themes set out in last years summit, but with an update a year ahead and a look to the future of virtual training and how we can ensure our training and education is provided in a FAIRer manner.

To explore and review further experiences of virtual education and training since May 2020 and look ahead to the use of virtual training in the future, and its relation to f2f delivery.

• Based on the previous summit and the ISMB WEB, the following themes have been suggested for discussion this year; groups in different timezones may however wish to focus on different themes.

  • Tools and technologies for delivery - additional tools / technologies to be added to our previous list; further use elements where new functionality has been added; further ideas of use eg case studies / examples

  • Challenges and highlights of delivering content virtually - what challenges still remain in virtual delivery, but also what are the benefits and highlights we have seen which we do not always see in a f2f setting?

  • Assessing learning virtually - have the challenges identified last time been met; have we more cases where assessments have been successful, or where challenges still remain?

  • FAIR training - how can we ensure all the benefits we see within virtual training are made available to wider audiences; what is it to be FAIR in training and how it can be achieved.

A curated collection of knowledge in and around Virtual delivery to include:

• Methods

• Tools and Tech

• Assessments

This is a collection of knowledge which can be updated / added to / revised as a community effort.

FAIR training - discussions will be added to a body of work which will be further discussed at the ISMB WEB 2021; outputs from that final workshop will be shared later this year.