Pre-, Mid-, and Post-Course Evaluation Surveys for the 2014 Open Science for Synthesis (OSS) Training Workshop

<b>Pre-, Mid-, and Post-Course Evaluation Surveys for the 2014 Open Science for Synthesis (OSS) Training Workshop</b><i> </i> <i>Please cite as:</i> Rebich-Hespanha S, Jones MB, Schildhauer MP, Idaszak R, Aukema JE, Hampton SE, Regetz J, Lenhardt WC, Ahalt S. (2016). Pre-, Mid-, and Post-Course Evaluation Surveys for the 2014 Open Science for Synthesis (OSS) Training Workshop. <i>figshare</i>. doi: 10.6084/m9.figshare.2070082<b><i>About Open Science for Synthesis</i></b>Open Science for Synthesis is a unique bi-coastal training offered for early career scientists who want to learn new software and technology skills needed for open, collaborative, and reproducible synthesis research. UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and University of North Carolina’s Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) co-led Open Science for Synthesis (#OSS2014) as a three-week intensive training workshop with participants in both Santa Barbara, CA and Chapel Hill, NC from July 21 - August 8, 2014. The training was sponsored by the Institute for Sustainable Earth and Environmental Software (ISEES) and the Water Science Software Institute (WSSI), both of which are conceptualizing an institute for sustainable scientific software. Participants received hands-on guided experience using best practices in the technical aspects that underlie successful open science and synthesis – from data discovery and integration to analysis and visualization, and special techniques for collaborative scientific research, including virtual collaboration over the Internet. A dynamic group of instructors provided for a mixture of instructive lectures, discussions forums, exercises, and real world application of skills to synthesis projects. More information about the OSS training workshop can be found at https://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/OSS. <b><i>About the Surveys</i></b>This document contains 3 surveys: pre-course, mid-course, and post-course. Questions appear in this document in the order in which they appeared in the surveys. Question numbers (<b>Qxx</b>) serve as unique IDs for questions. In cases when the same question is used in more than one survey, the same question number is associated with that question in both surveys. Notes in curly brackets {} indicate relationships between questions that appeared in different surveys. The survey questions cover topics such as demographic characteristics, educational background and training, analytical and technical proficiencies, data management, experience with research collaboration and science communication, attitudes toward the open science paradigm, learning preferences, satisfaction with virtual interaction experienced during the workshop, self-assessment of progress, satisfaction with content and delivery of course curriculum, and perceptions of trade-offs (environmental, economic, diversity-related) associated with participating virtually as opposed to in person. Some of the questions included in these surveys were developed by Juliann E. Aukema, Stephanie E. Hampton, and Jim Regetz for evaluation of the 2013 NCEAS Summer Institute (https://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/outreach/summer-institute/2013/summer-institute-2013).