The Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN) and OceanWise are delighted to announce the next run of our free online workshop: Marine Data Management, Governance and the MEDIN toolset. The course will take place over five days from 13 to 17 September, with live lessons in the morning and independent learning in the afternoons. Places are limited so please register on OceanTeacher Global Academy, using enrolment key: MEDIN_Sept2021, as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.
This training course is suitable for anyone responsible for collecting or managing marine environmental data in the public sector, industry or for education or research. Familiarity with different marine data types, and how data is acquired and used, would be helpful but not essential. Prior knowledge or practical experience of data management is not required.
The course can be taken as a whole, or attendees can select modules according to two streams: Marine Data Governance; or Practical MEDIN. Some modules are common to both streams, for example, modules on marine data management principles and components.
How data management relates to organisational management, data management planning, and data sharing and publishing, are included in the Governance stream, whereas detailed instruction on using the MEDIN metadata standard and guidelines to improve access to and reusability of data are included in the Practical MEDIN stream.
The course features interactive training and discussion sessions, quizzes, and assignments to help users become familiar with:
- Why data management is important and how it can and arguably should be part of an organisations business management framework alongside quality, occupational health and safety, and information security.
- The role of a data policy and management plan, and how data can be shared, published and re-used.
- Data management principles, standards and components, including data lifecycle and quality, the role of vocabularies (or data dictionaries) and the importance of creating, maintaining and publishing metadata.
- The resources and other benefits of MEDIN and practical instruction in the use of the MEDIN data guidelines, metadata standard and controlled vocabularies.
- How data management ‘best practice’ can improve organisational efficiency in data acquisition, analysis, curation and sharing. It covers data use with respect to corporate risk, re-use, audit and traceability, whilst at the same time helping minimising costs.
The course will equip attendees to better meet the challenge of keeping on top of the ever-increasing volumes and types of data that are being created and how to manage this data and make it available to users as meaningful information.