The Role of Online Training Events in the Development of Quantitative Data Skills in Students from Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts Disciplines, 2022

The main aim of this work was to explore how online training events, outside of traditional academic courses, can support Social Science, Arts and Humanities (SHAPE) students to develop data skills.

There is international demand for data skills in the workplace, and Governments are increasingly concerned with how quantitative data skills are acquired for 21st Century jobs. If SHAPE students are trained in data skills they can enter into statistical professions and data careers. Online learning has risen significantly in the last decade, and even more so since the COVID-19 pandemic. Within the field of social research methods, online learning has grown rapidly and there is an emerging literature on the pedagogy. Data skills are vital for research and there is acknowledgement that online learning can play a role in data skills training.

The data collection contains anonymised transcripts from 8 qualitative semi-structured individual interviews with SHAPE students who attended UK Data Service online training events. The interviews explored why the student had attended the UKDS event, what they learnt from it, how it has supported the development of data skills and how this will help their career. Ten students participated in the original study – we have consent from eight of ten the students to share their anonymised data in this repository.